Is Consciousness a Violation of
Quantum Mechanics?

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 17:24:55 -0800
From: Jack Sarfatti <JackSarfatti@msn.com>
To: quantum-d list <quantum-d@teleport.com>
Subject: Consciousness a Violation of QM? / Tucson II

I will be giving the following paper at the 1996 Tuscon Conference on 
Consciousness organized by Roger Penrose's associate Stuart Hameroff.

  [As this conference approaches (April 8-13) I hope that we will 
   preview various relevant issues on this mailing list! - Rhett
   see http://www.eu.arizona.edu/~uaextend/conferen/consc.html]

Title: Is Consciousness a Violation of Quantum Mechanics?

                             Abstract

Brian Josephson has suggested that living matter is able to use
nonlocal quantum connections in a way that transcends the statistical
predictions of orthodox quantum mechanics. Henry Stapp has published
a detailed mathematical model of "intent" in accord with Josephson's
qualitative idea. Roger Penrose has conjectured a new kind of
gravitational self-collapse of the wavefunction of the brain beyond
ordinary quantum mechanics that he connects with qualia.  All this 
work assumes Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation in which there 
actually is a "collapse" from potentiality to actuality. I look
at the mind-matter problem from the different perspective of Bohm's
nonlocal hidden variable quantum theory in which the wave function
has equal ontological status with matter. In contrast, Bohr throws
matter, in the classical visualizable sense, away at the quantum
level. Matter re-emerges in a "classical limit" connected with 
"collapse". In accord with Chalmer's idea, I posit that the 
wavefunction is intrinsically "mental" capable of qualia. Bohm showed
that the Schrodinger equation and the Born probability interpretation 
of orthodox quantum mechanics depend upon the approximation that
there is a new kind of "organic" or "wholistic" nonlocal and 
context-dependent "quantum force" that the wave function exerts on 
matter in addition to the electro-weak, strong and gravitational 
forces. If we think of this as a kind of "mental" force we immediately
understand how mind moves matter in an animistic picture of a living 
universe. That's the easy problem. The hard problem is how matter
acts back on the mental wavefunction. Bohm, in 1952, proved that any
direct back-action of matter on its wavefunction violates the
Schrodinger equation and the equation of continuity of probability
current required for the Born probability interpretation. I argue
that this is precisely what is needed to explain the creative
evolution of all living organizations of matter which are open systems 
far from thermal equilibrium that continually measure themselves. 
Back-action of matter on mind (as wave function) completes the 
feedback-control loop between matter and mind in this unabashedly 
dualistic theory. Data flow from certain collective modes of living 
brain matter, as modeled by Hameroff, is what enables perception, 
feeling and intent which are intrinsic properties of the dynamic 
patterns of the macroscopically coherent quantum wave function of these 
high-level modes. The mind is protected against thermal decoherence
of the environment in accord with Mulhauser's idea. In conclusion, 
ordinary quantum mechanics is as incapable of explaining qualia as is 
classical mechanics and electrodynamics. We require a new mechanics
beyond the quantum in which matter and mind co-determine each other.
The new mechanics reduces to ordinary quantum mechanics for low-level
modes when the back-action reduces to zero.

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