Sent 10 Feb 1996 Newsgroups: sci.psychology.consciousness References: <960206232153.236070a4@theorm.lbl.gov> Subject: Quantum experiences (was Re: Tucson II [Function and Experience]) Henry Stapp claims that experience is somehow central to physics. This was in part of a longer article on the relationship between functional states and experiences. I'll reply to his other points separately. He writes: > Bohr's core point was precisely that science is about "our knowledge": > it is about what human beings can think about and perceive. If science is only about our knowledge then that raises the question what our knowledge is about. Normally knowledge is taken to include scientific knowledge. But if science is about nothing but our knowledge, then we have a problem about how science can have any content, for there must be something about which we know other than our knowledge. Otherwise we'd have an infinite regress of knowledge about knowledge about knowledge..... If our knowledge gets content from the fact that some of it is about other things than itself (e.g. water, electrons, planets, plate tectontics, viruses, etc.) then I don't see why science itself should not be about those things. If science were only about human knowledge, then we could not have a science about the early stages in the universe before there were any humans, or any human knowledge. But we do. E.g. there's paleontology and cosmology. If cosmology were only about what people thought then the psychology of creationism would be part of cosmology, and it rightly isn't. If only *some* of science is about our knowledge, then there's no problem. E.g. cognitive science is about what people can know and how they can know it, and that includes cognitive science. But it builds up from knowledge of other things. By contrast, I don't see how physics could be simply about our knowledge, for the things it studies can exist without any human beings. Maybe what is being said, in a confusing way, is that human science, including physics, will, at any time, be constrained by currently available human forms of representation, reasoning, etc. (That's a point made long ago by Immanuel Kant, and probably others before him, though he was too much of an absolutist to say "currently available". He apparently did not realise that conceptual frameworks and representational apparatus could develop.) Anyhow saying that human capabilities constrain (human) physics is different from saying that physics is *about* human knowledge. (Maybe this quibble is misdirected because Bohr and Stapp did not really mean to say what the above quote apparently says.) Stapp has also been claiming that quantum physics requires experiences to play a role in the dynamics of the physical world. This seems to imply that there were experiences around millions of years ago, long before there were humans or other animals. I think that that shows that the notion of "experience" being used here must be a technical term of physics, which is not the same notion of experience that leads into philosophical and scientific discussions of (human and animal) consciousness. I.e. the word "experience" is being used in at least two totally different sense: the quantum theoretic sense and the ordinary sense(s). I have no quarrel with a scientist who wishes to add some new kind of force or whatever to current physics: if that leads to great advances, powerful new equations, new mathematics, new successful predictions, etc. then it will be justified. Calling the new stuff "experience" could be unwarranted, however. [HS] > Since our basic scientific physical theory thus rests upon this > apparently irreducible physical/experiential foundation Unless there's a pun on the word "experiential" I find this very obscure and implausible. I've never been able to make any sense of it. (That could just be a result of the limitations of my brain.) All the examples I've heard put forward to support such claims seemed to me simply to be cases where some large-scale structure (such as a brain or some sort of measuring device) interacts with small-scale structures (such as electrons passing through slits). Saying that the interaction requires something called experience or consciousness or observation seems to just bring in unnecessary obfuscation. I am probably too simple-minded to understand these things. My study of quantum physics stopped at undergraduate level, many years ago. And I would not dream of ruling out advances in quantum physics on the basis of conceptual arguments. But it's important for scientists not to mislead the gullible public by choosing inappropriate terminology. (Like the obfuscatory misuse of the word "information" in mathematical information theory.) Later he writes: [HS] > experience could very well be an equal and irreducible (to anything else) > partner in psycho-physical theory, just as it is in our basic physical theory. ^^^^^^^^**^^^ How you can be sure the that the "it" that Bohr etc. bring in to quantum physics, which is a pretty sophisticated notion, has *anything* at all to do with what ordinary people who are totally ignorant of quantum mechanics refer to (or think they are referring to) as "experience" or "consciousness", which is what theories of consciousness are generally trying to explain or discuss? It's all very well to introduce new entities and forces into physics, but if you start using words that are already familiar in other contexts ("spin", "charm", "string", "experience" or whatever) there's a serious risk of confusing the innocent and gullible. (Even confusing oneself: like the over-enthusiastic AI programmers who say their program gets angry because there's a variable called "anger" whose value increases. What has quantum physics got to do with whether I have a tickle, or experience an optical illusion, or enjoy solving puzzles? Those are things I'd call "experiences". Were such things as tickles and percepts driving physical processes long before the evolution of even the simplest forms of life?) Incidentally, the last time I talked to Penrose (around 1993 I think) even he was opposed to the notion that consciousness was a PART of physics. He wanted quantum physics to explain consciousness, not the other way round. (He happened to have the rather odd notion that explaining consciousness meant explaining the ability to overcome Godel-type limitations, a strange requirement which doesn't seem to play any role in any aspect of consciousness that I've encountered. But that's another story.) Further on... [HS] > ...I believe that experiences > are real irreducible things that *do* play an important role in mind/brain > dynamics, and that the role they play is linked to the crucial role of the > experience of the observer in quantum mechanics. I don't know what "irreducible" is supposed to mean here. If we drop that word, the first half of the comment is very close to what I take (deep) functionalism to be saying, namely that experiences, just like manipulations of data-structures in a Prolog virtual machine, play an important role in the dynamics of events in that machine, and can also have effects in the implementation machine and the environment. (E.g. solving an equation can cause some bits to be changed in a low level virtual machine and some transistors to change their state in the physical machine, and some ink to appear on paper.) So the only way we differ, it seems, is that you want to bring in experiences as part of basic physics. When you've convinced physicists that you have found some extension to physics that really helps to solve problems in physics, then I can try (with your help, if I may) to understand what you've done. I'll be very surprised if you can convince me that the extra things in your equations or formulae, i.e. the extra components in your quantum dynamics, are human experiences (i.e. things like pangs, tickles, sensations, percepts, thoughts, thrills, etc.), whatever label you happen to attach to them. But I'm always willing to learn, if it's not beyond my brain's capability. Aaron ---