Science Forums 2

[paultrr]

Speculation that quantum mechanics and consciousness are linked is based on the principle that the act of measurement, which involves a conscious observer, has an effect on quantum events. Part of the center of the argument here is how real is the wavefunction(See: Bohm versus say Bell). Another not often looked at issue is nature its own observer. If nature is, then in essence consciousness is not a requirement for the wavefunction to collapse.

Quantum approaches to consciousness are sometimes said to be motivated simply by the idea that quantum theory is a mystery and consciousness is a mystery. That opinion betrays a profound misunderstanding of the Nature of quantum mechanics, which consists fundamentally of a scientific solution to the problem of the relationship between mind and matter. There are two kinds of descriptions that jointly comprise the foundation of science.

1.) Accounts of psychologically experienced empirical findings, expressed in a language that allows us to communicate to our colleagues what we have done and what we have learned.

2.) Specifications of physical properties, which are expressed by assigning mathematical properties space-time points, and formulating laws that determine how these properties evolve over the course of time.

Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and their colleagues discovered a way to connect these two kinds of descriptions by causal laws, and their discovery was extended by John von Neumann from the domain of atomic science to the realm of neuroscience, and in particular to the problem of understanding and describing the causal connections between the minds and the brains of human beings. According to quantum physics, as it is both practiced and taught, our human choices play a key dynamical role in our scientific description of nature. This injection of observer/participants into the basic causal structure of physics was the radical revision in the conception of science ushered in by the founder’s of quantum theory.

The quantum conception of the relationship between the psychologically and physically described components of scientific practice was achieved by abandoning the classical picture of the physical world that had ruled science since the time of Newton, Galileo, and Descartes. The building blocks of science were shifted from descriptions of the behaviors of tiny bits of mindless matter to accounts of the actions that we take to acquire knowledge and of the knowledge that we thereby acquire. Science was transformed from its seventeenth century form, which effectively excluded our conscious thoughts from any causal role in the mechanical workings of Nature, to its twentieth century form, which focuses on our active engagement with Nature, and on what we can learn by taking appropriate action.

The altered role of conscious agents is poetically expressed by Bohr’s famous dictum:

“In the great drama of existence we ourselves are both actors and spectators.” (Bohr, 1963, p. 15: 1958, p. 81)

Further, it is even more expressed in statements such as:

"The freedom of experimentation, presupposed in classical physics, is of course retained and corresponds to the free choice of experimental arrangement for which the mathematical structure of the quantum mechanical formalism offers the appropriate latitude." (Bohr, 1958, p. 73}

The switch in thought between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is summarized in Heisenberg’s famous assertion:

“The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept, but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of the particle but rather our knowledge of this behavior.” (Heisenberg, 1958a)

Heisenburg and others tended to see the wavefunction as a mathematical construct to understand the knowledge of behavior at the quantum level which is the background in which all existance takes place. Bohm and others tended to see the mathematical construct we call the wavefunction as real in itself. Ever since that point it has depended upon one's quantum interpretation of events weither consciousness really is involved in this or not. To some it is and to some it is not. Today there are positions in between these two extremes.

Either way one stands here is the crux of the problem. We exist as part of nature. On a quantum level that makes us active when it comes to trying to measure anything. The role of observer then by nature has an effect upon the outcome. The two cannot be divorced enough to actually determine just how important consciousness is in all this. But in essence nature itself is involved in all quantum process and events. As such nature itself holds a position as observer/participant and few would attribute conscious acts of will to nature itself. So even if one takes the position of the wavefunction being real there is no absolute reason or evidence to assume that everyhting depends upon consciousness.

I would however, go as far to suggest that quantum mechanics does play a role in consciousness as we understand it. But the actual evidence out of science is not at all in favor of say, our consciousness creating everything that is no matter which camp one finds oneself in.