What is the wave function about?

[ThomasT]

But if a person can anticipate the future course of events, then yes, a person does have choices.

I agree that we have, and evaluate, and make choices based on, as you said (I'm paraphrasing), our projections of what each distinct course of action that we're considering might entail -- and this behavior is, I think, compatible with the assumption that in a deterministically evolving universe we could not have done other than what we did.

The course of physical events may be highly determined - drop a stone and it will fall - but that just makes them very easy to anticipate and so control.

Recall the way I approached defining determinism in post #65. If we assume that our universe is deterministically evolving in that sense, then that's incompatible with free will defined as the possibility that, given a certain set of antecedent universal spatial configurations (uc1), then some set of universal spatial configurations (uci) other than the set of configurations that was observed to have occurred (uc2) could have occured. That is, free will means uc1 --> uci, but deterministic evolution means uc1 --> uc2.

Like Demystify, you are making the classic mistake of assuming all causality to be local effective or proximate cause. Whatever happens is being driven by immediate past events.

We observe that uc1 --> uc2. That is, we observe the universe to be changing in such a way that each almost instantaneous snapshot of its spatial configuration is unique and very much like its immediate predecessors and successors. Free will entails that temporally proximal configurations might be less closely congruent (ie., more different) than a finite speed of change would allow.

But human freewill is all about being driven by anticipation of future consequences. We imagine what might be the case of alternative courses of action and act accordingly.

That's ok for dealing with things at the human level, the level of our sensory apprehension. But I think we've learned enough to make some inferences about what the universe might be on a deeper level than just the way it appears to us -- keeping in mind that we're an inseparable part of it all, just along for the ride so to speak.

I think we have to frame the free will vs determinism consideration wrt a vision of reality that's somewhat less anthropic than our human "anticipation of future consequences". We might, for example, assume that the deep reality of the universe is waves in a hierarchy of media, and that it's "being driven" by a fundamental wave dynamic (not an anticipation of the future), like, say, the expanding wave shell that results from dropping a stone into a pool of water -- a characteristic behavior of all waves in all media at all scales -- toward eventual equilibrium with whatever it's a part of.

The same more complex view of causality can be taken in physics too. So we can talk about dynamical systems being entrained to structural attractors, dissipative structures entrained to the second law of thermodynamics, or quantum systems betraying evidence of contextuality and retrocausality.

Sure, there are emergent regimes, protectorates, organizing principles, etc. And the assumption that our universe is evolving deterministically both underlies and transcends all of that.

And 'retrocausality' is also incompatible with the assumption of deterministic evolution.

Clearly, you are deeply committed to the belief that reality is simply deterministic ...

I think we all are. It's the, at least tacitly, assumed basis for all of our actions. We might say that we believe the universe to be evolving nondeterministically, but we behave as if we believe that it's evolving deterministically.

But whatever one chooses to say one believes, the argument that the assumption of free will (ie., that we could have done other than what we did) is incompatible with the assumption that the universe is evolving deterministically still holds, imo

... - the only causality is local/material/effective.

Yes, I think so. For example, I wouldn't call light 'material', but we only know anything about it because of its effects on material objects. And the assumption that the universe is evolving in accordance with the principle of local causality (ie., that the speed of configurational change is limited by c) does fit with all extant observations, afaik.

And so you want to make both QM and human freewill fit that deep belief about nature.

QM does fit that belief (that we're part of a deterministically evolving universe), whereas, I think I've shown that free will doesn't.

But that is just one theory about causality.

Causality just refers to the ordering of the evolutionary sequence of spatial configurations of some 'system' of objects. Wrt the universe, each configuration is unique, and each configuration is both a cause and an effect, being called one or the other depending on whether it's being considered as a predecessor or a successor to some other configuration.

There are other ways to think about the facts.

Imo, the evident deterministic evolution of the universe in a direction away from prior configurations (the arrow of time -- a consequence of the fundamental wave dynamic) is a fact of nature which renders free will and retrocausality as essentially meaningless concepts.

 

[ThomasT]

Maybe my idea of free will (e.g. voluntaty action) is somewhat more simplistic but here's a diagram that kind of makes sense to me. The only part I'm not convinced about is that I think one can argue that another arrow from "conscious mind" to action should be added. I don't think all action is initiated subconsciously. Free will debates: Simple experiments are not so simple

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2942748/pdf/acp-06-047.pdf

The way Klemm defines free will, then it's obviously compatible with determinism. And if you're defining free will to simply mean 'voluntary' action, then of course this is compatible with determinism.

But I thought we were defining free will to mean that given a certain situation preceding a particular choice and behavior by you, that given exactly the same situation you could have chosen and behaved differently -- which entails nondeterminism, and which is incompatible with determinism.

Analysis of the controversy requires clear definitions of a few terms, which unfortunately are often used colloquially with poor precision. To a degree, such problems are inevitable. Nonetheless, operational definitions are helpful. Free will could be defined in various ways. Will is herein operationally defined here by such synonyms as intent, choice, or decision, and it can be accomplished consciously or subconsciously.
Free implies a conscious causation in which an intent, choice, or decision is made among alternatives that are more or less possible of accomplishment and are not constrained by either external or internal imperatives for the embodied brain.

EDIT: I might have to change my assessment of Klemm's definition. What does "external or internal imperatives for the embodied brain" mean?

 

[apeiron]

I agree that we have, and evaluate, and make choices based on, as you said (I'm paraphrasing), our projections of what each distinct course of action that we're considering might entail -- and this behavior is, I think, compatible with the assumption that in a deterministically evolving universe we could not have done other than what we did.

OK, so when a computer gate switches state, what material event caused it? Would a complete knowledge of UC1 (the state of a set of circuits at one instant) allow you to predict the state of those circuits at UC2? Or instead, would something unseen to the material description - the program, a formal cause - determine the state at UC2?

I think we have to frame the free will vs determinism consideration wrt a vision of reality that's somewhat less anthropic than our human "anticipation of future consequences". We might, for example, assume that the deep reality of the universe is waves in a hierarchy of media, and that it's "being driven" by a fundamental wave dynamic (not an anticipation of the future), like, say, the expanding wave shell that results from dropping a stone into a pool of water -- a characteristic behavior of all waves in all media at all scales -- toward eventual equilibrium with whatever it's a part of.

What is anthropic about reducing consciousness and freewill to a general systems description of reality?

But it would certainly be unscientific to claim that human minds are NOT based on anticipatory processes. So to attempt to explain freewill without starting from the actual design of the brain seems the dumb thing here.

I think we all are. It's the, at least tacitly, assumed basis for all of our actions. We might say that we believe the universe to be evolving nondeterministically, but we behave as if we believe that it's evolving deterministically.

I think you miss the crucial point. To the extent the world behaves predictably, intelligence can take advantage of that. Our brains actively seek out the reliable patterns (the apparently highly determined). Which is what then makes us the rather radically undetermined (those with the knowledge to do otherwise - or at least choose to trigger the patterns of events that we want to see triggered, and try not to trigger those we would prefer not to triggered).

So the better we are as reductionists, seeing the deterministic in the world, the greater is our capacity to be the "freely choosing" determiners of that world.

 

[bohm2]

The way Klemm defines free will, then it's obviously compatible with determinism. And if you're defining free will to simply mean 'voluntary' action, then of course this is compatible with determinism.

But I thought we were defining free will to mean that given a certain situation preceding a particular choice and behavior by you, that given exactly the same situation you could have chosen and behaved differently -- which entails nondeterminism, and which is incompatible with determinism.

..."are not constrained by either external or internal imperatives for the embodied brain."...

EDIT: I might have to change my assessment of Klemm's definition. What does "external or internal imperatives for the embodied brain" mean.

From some Bohmian philosophical perspectives, one can take it to mean that there's a self-conscious organism that is not fully determined either by the environment or the "physical" parts that constitute the organism (particles/brain). The closest thing I could think of from Bohm's ontology, is the quantum potential since it is not itself acted upon by the particles(e.g. in pilot wave theory, ψ acts on positions of particles but, evolving as it does autonomously via Schrodinger’s equation, it is not acted upon by the particles). I have come across a few very speculative papers by Hiley, etc. sort of taking this position, I think. Then again, I might not be fully understanding their arguments:

Can Mind Affect Matter Via Active Information?

The quantum potential energy does not behave like an additional energy of classical type. It has no external source, but is some form of internal energy, split off from the kinetic energy (see Brown and Hiley 2000). Furthermore, if we look at traditional quantum mechanical problems and examine the quantum potential energy in mathematical detail, we find that it contains information about the experimental environment in which the particle finds itself, hence its possible role as an information potential.

http://www.mindmatter.de/resources/pdf/hileywww.pdf

See the slide "Two-way traffic":

Assuming that notion of such an influence of the particle on its field can be coherently developed, we can then have two-way traffic between the mental and the physical levels without reducing one to the other. Role of Bohm’s model of the quantum system then would be that it provides a kind of prototype that defines a more general class of systems in which a field of information is connected with a material body by a two-way relationship.

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/PWT/lectures/bohm8.pdf

 

[ThomasT]

OK, so when a computer gate switches state, what material event caused it? Would a complete knowledge of UC1 (the state of a set of circuits at one instant) allow you to predict the state of those circuits at UC2? Or instead, would something unseen to the material description - the program, a formal cause - determine the state at UC2?

uc1 and uc2 refer to sets of universal configurations. Wrt the assumption that the universe is evolving deterministically, determinism = uc1 --> uc2.
If free will is taken to mean that we could have behaved in some way other than the way we did behave (and this includes subjective or internal choosing behavior) given uc1, then free will = uc1 --> uci (where uci denotes a set of possible universal configurations different from uc2; a member of uci can be a configuration which has occurred before or it can be a configuration which has never occurred but is so different from uc1 that uc1 --> uci would in that case indicate objects moving at, say, billions of times the speed of light).

We invariably observe uc1 --> uc2, and we refer to that as deterministic evolution. We never observe uc1 --> uci, ie., we never observe the universe to be evolving indeterministically or nondeterministically. The problem for free will is that it entails uc1 --> uci and is thus necessarily incompatible with deterministic evolution.

What is anthropic about reducing consciousness and freewill to a general systems description of reality?

You said that free will is driven by "anticipation of future consequences". I replied that I thought we should frame the free will vs determinism consideration in somewhat less anthropic terms, such as in terms of sequences of universal configurations driven by a fundamental wave dynamic.

But it would certainly be unscientific to claim that human minds are NOT based on anticipatory processes.

It wouldn't be unscientific in a universe whose apparent deterministic evolution is based on countless interations of a fundamental wave dynamic rather than 'anticipatory processes'. Which do you think is more likely driving the universal evolution?

So to attempt to explain freewill without starting from the actual design of the brain seems the dumb thing here.

We're not (at least I'm not) engaged in explaining free will. We're simply defining it, and then evaluating whether, wrt that definition, it's compatible with determinism.

If free will simply refers to choices we make and actions we do, then it's compatible with determinism. If it means that we could have chosen and acted differently than we did given the exact same antecedent conditions, then it's incompatible with determinism.

I think you miss the crucial point. To the extent the world behaves predictably, intelligence can take advantage of that.

Yes of course. And that's not incompatible with determinism. We just can't validly claim, in a deterministically evolving universe, that we could have done anything differently than we did.

Our brains actively seek out the reliable patterns (the apparently highly determined). Which is what then makes us the rather radically undetermined (those with the knowledge to do otherwise - or at least choose to trigger the patterns of events that we want to see triggered, and try not to trigger those we would prefer not to triggered).

There isn't anything necessarily indeterminate or undetermined about any of that. Indeterminism is only entailed if you say that given the same antecedent conditions you could have chosen and/or behaved differently.

 

[ThomasT]

From some Bohmian philosophical perspectives, one can take it to mean that there's a self-conscious organism that is not fully determined either by the environment or the "physical" parts that constitute the organism (particles/brain). The closest thing I could think of from Bohm's ontology, is the quantum potential since it is not itself acted upon by the particles(e.g. in pilot wave theory, ψ acts on positions of particles but, evolving as it does autonomously via Schrodinger’s equation, it is not acted upon by the particles). I have come across a few very speculative papers by Hiley, etc. sort of taking this position, I think. Then again, I might not be fully understanding their arguments:

Can Mind Affect Matter Via Active Information?

The quantum potential energy does not behave like an additional energy of classical type. It has no external source, but is some form of internal energy, split off from the kinetic energy (see Brown and Hiley 2000). Furthermore, if we look at traditional quantum mechanical problems and examine the quantum potential energy in mathematical detail, we find that it contains information about the experimental environment in which the particle finds itself, hence its possible role as an information potential.

http://www.mindmatter.de/resources/pdf/hileywww.pdf

See the slide "Two-way traffic":

Assuming that notion of such an influence of the particle on its field can be coherently developed, we can then have two-way traffic between the mental and the physical levels without reducing one to the other. Role of Bohm’s model of the quantum system then would be that it provides a kind of prototype that defines a more general class of systems in which a field of information is connected with a material body by a two-way relationship.

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/PWT/lectures/bohm8.pdf

Thanks. I think it's evident that mind does affect matter via information, and vice versa. But that doesn't necessarily entail that mind or information is in any sense nonmaterial.

However, let's suppose that mind 'sets' or 'states' are determined at least partially by nonmaterial forces or influences. Such a scenario isn't incompatible with a deterministically evolving universe. And wrt such a universe the possiblity that you could have thought and/or behaved differently than you did, given the exact same antecedent conditions, is still ruled out.

 

[ThomasT]

@bohm2

In looking over the links I noticed in "Nonlocality and entanglement in the implicate order" Bohm comes to the correct (imo) conclusion that entangled entities don't have to be communicating with each other. But for the somewhat 'nebulous' and, I think, essentially incorrect reason that the entangled entities are "at a deeper level of reality ... actually one and the same".
Photons of different wavelengths emitted at different times can be entangled in polarization (see Aspect et al. 1982). In this case, they're obviously not the same thing or even distant parts of some encompassing subsystem. They're distinct and separate optical disturbances that are related (via the law of conservation of angular momentum) due to the fact that they were emitted in opposited directions by the same atom during the same atomic transition (albeit at slightly different times during the transition and at different frequencies -- or so the model goes).

I do however very much like the idea of the implicate order, and reality being a seamless whole.

 

[apeiron]

uc1 and uc2 refer to sets of universal configurations. Wrt the assumption that the universe is evolving deterministically, determinism = uc1 --> uc2.
If free will is taken to mean that we could have behaved in some way other than the way we did behave (and this includes subjective or internal choosing behavior) given uc1, then free will = uc1 --> uci (where uci denotes a set of possible universal configurations different from uc2; a member of uci can be a configuration which has occurred before or it can be a configuration which has never occurred but is so different from uc1 that uc1 --> uci would in that case indicate objects moving at, say, billions of times the speed of light).

We invariably observe uc1 --> uc2, and we refer to that as deterministic evolution. We never observe uc1 --> uci, ie., we never observe the universe to be evolving indeterministically or nondeterministically. The problem for free will is that it entails uc1 --> uci and is thus necessarily incompatible with deterministic evolution.

Rather than talking around my question, can you please instead answer it.

If there is indeed a causal disjunct between the evolution of material states and the evolution of formal states, as per the example of the hardware and software of a computer, then your whole "UCi" argument falls flat unless you show further that "freewill" is solely a a matter of material evolution.

It wouldn't be unscientific in a universe whose apparent deterministic evolution is based on countless interations of a fundamental wave dynamic rather than 'anticipatory processes'. Which do you think is more likely driving the universal evolution?

Well we have plenty of evidence that brains are anticipatory.

But where on Earth are you getting this idea that reality IS "countless interations of a fundamental wave dynamic"? Do you have references that might explain what you mean here?

There isn't anything necessarily indeterminate or undetermined about any of that. Indeterminism is only entailed if you say that given the same antecedent conditions you could have chosen and/or behaved differently.

You are avoiding the point again. The degree of choice available to a falling rock and a "freely willing" human are patently of different orders. This is a difference we would want to be able to model as scientists. To keep saying that the material processes of humans are the exact equivalent of those are a rock is to ignore the fundamental difference between the simple and the complex.

 

[bohm2]

In looking over the links I noticed in "Nonlocality and entanglement in the implicate order" Bohm comes to the correct (imo) conclusion that entangled entities don't have to be communicating with each other. But for the somewhat 'nebulous' and, I think, essentially incorrect reason that the entangled entities are "at a deeper level of reality ... actually one and the same".

I'm still trying to understand Bohm's philosophy of why he favoured a monistic picture. A general guideline why he felt that in general there was something "deeper" underlying this wave-particle duality in QM is Bohm's quotes in this Hiley piece:

In the same section of his book, Bohm draws attention to what he calls 'a serious problem' that confronts us when the theory is extended to deal with more than one particle. The problem with N particles is that the wave function is not in ordinary 3-dimensional space, but instead, in an abstract 3N-dimensional configuration space. While of course this space is logically consistent, the concept of a wave in a 3N-dimensional space is far from physically obvious. At this stage Bohm simply regarded his proposals as an artifice that could be used provisionally until a better theory emerges "in which everything is expressed once more in ordinary 3-dimensional space". This problem of configuration space was eventually resolved by introducing the notion of 'active information' . However there remains a deeper problem as Bohm points out:

Finally, our model in which wave and particle are regarded as basically different entities, which interact in a way that is not essential to their modes of being, does not seem very plausible. The fact that wave and particle are never found separately suggests instead that they are both different aspects of some fundamentally new kind of entity which is likely to be quite different from a simple wave or a simple particle, but which leads to these two limiting manifestations as approximations that are valid under appropriate conditions.

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley/History_of_Bohm_s_QT.pdf

 

[ThomasT]

Rather than talking around my question, can you please instead answer it.

My intention was to clarify my definitions of determinism and free will. Your question was:

OK, so when a computer gate switches state, what material event caused it? Would a complete knowledge of UC1 (the state of a set of circuits at one instant) allow you to predict the state of those circuits at UC2? Or instead, would something unseen to the material description - the program, a formal cause - determine the state at UC2?

I agree that the circuit states of a computer, and configurations of the universe (and everything between and below) are determined by "something unseen to the material description - the program, a formal cause ...", fundamental dynamical law(s), not so fundamental dynamical laws, emergent organizing principles, etc.

If there is indeed a causal disjunct between the evolution of material states and the evolution of formal states, as per the example of the hardware and software of a computer, then your whole "UCi" argument falls flat unless you show further that "freewill" is solely a a matter of material evolution.

It's evident that our choices and actions are factors in determining the course of events. This is not in question. What is in question is whether we could have chosen and acted other than we did, given certain antecedent conditions. This is what we're referring to as free will.

What I was trying to do was to translate the determinism/free will conundrum into a more readily understandable consideration.

So, I supposed that we might think of the evolution of the universe in terms of a sequence of 'god's eye view' 3D snapshots of the spatial configuration of the universe (on any level, but the level of our sensory apprehension will do). Then we might define a deterministically evolving universe as producing a sequence of snapshots in which there are no anomalous configurations, or sets thereof. Let's say that the snapshots depict configurations of almost instantaneous duration and are taken at one second intervals. In a deterministically evolving universe, then, each snapshot depicts a unique configuration. Each configuration is incongruent wrt every other configuration with the degree of incongrency between any two configurations increasing as the distance between them in the photo index increases. That is, snapshots that are, say, two seconds apart would be very similar, but snapshots separated by, say, 10^20 seconds would be very noticabley different.

In shorthand I refer to this as determinism = uc1 --> uc2.

Now, if we take free will to refer to the "freedom to have done otherwise given certain past states", then this would imply the possibility of the occurrence of anomalous (wrt a deterministic index) configurations in the index. The freedom to have done otherwise also has implications wrt the effects of one's actions. That is, if one could have done otherwise, then wouldn't it also hold that one's actions could have produced effects other than what they did? And so on wrt any given state of affairs. There would thus be no imperative or invariant relationship between adjacent configurations, or between degrees of congruency and distance in the index. There would be nothing preventing configurations from occasionally repeating.

In shorthand I refer to this as free will --> nondeterminism = uc1 --> uci .

Well we have plenty of evidence that brains are anticipatory.

Yes. I can say that my thought processes certainly include anticipatory considerations, and I assume that most everybody else's do too. But I think that on a fundamental level it's more likely that the evolution of the universe is being determined by dynamical laws (maybe ultimately just one) rather than the anticipation of future consequences.

But where on Earth are you getting this idea that reality IS "countless interations of a fundamental wave dynamic"? Do you have references that might explain what you mean here?

You can disregard this. Just speculation. It's just a so far ill-formed idea based on inferences regarding the wave nature of reality, and the interesting and unpredictable persistent forms that sometimes emerge via "game of life" cellular automata sorts of simulations.

There does seem to be a fundamental wave dynamic that's operational wrt all scales and media. And it might be a starting point of a model of universal evolution. But that's enough about it. It's speculative, and so not allowed in PF discussions, and anyway it doesn't matter wrt my attempt to simplify the free will/determinism consideration.

The degree of choice available to a falling rock and a "freely willing" human are patently of different orders.

Agreed. I don't suppose that rocks entertain choices at all. But we clearly do, whether we're willing 'freely' or not.

This is a difference we would want to be able to model as scientists. To keep saying that the material processes of humans are the exact equivalent of those of a rock is to ignore the fundamental difference between the simple and the complex.

I don't think I said it quite that way. Of course there are differences and those differences are made clearer via scientific modelling.

However, a deterministically evolving universe seems to me to entail that our choices and actions, and the consequences of those choices and actions, are as determined as the consequences of dropping a rock into a pool of water.

Of course, whether or not the universe is evolving deterministically will remain an open question. But my current opinion is that, given the evidence, it does seem to be evolving deterministically; and that does seem to be the working, de facto assumption underlying our choices and actions; and the assumption of determinism is incompatible with the notion that given a certain evolution up to a point (ie., a certain set of antecedent configurations) that from that point a different evolution could have ensued than that which did ensue.
---------------------------------------------------------

From the article on causal determinism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy :

On second thought however it is not so surprising that broadly Humean philosophers such as Ayer, Earman, Lewis and others still see a potential problem for freedom posed by determinism. For even if human actions are part of what makes the laws be what they are, this does not mean that we automatically have freedom of the kind we think we have, particularly freedom to have done otherwise given certain past states of affairs. It is one thing to say that everything occurring in and around my body, and everything everywhere else, conforms to Maxwell's equations and thus the Maxwell equations are genuine exceptionless regularities, and that because they in addition are simple and strong, they turn out to be laws. It is quite another thing to add: thus, I might have chosen to do otherwise at certain points in my life, and if I had, then Maxwell's equations would not have been laws. One might try to defend this claim—unpalatable as it seems intuitively, to ascribe ourselves law-breaking power—but it does not follow directly from a Humean approach to laws of nature. Instead, on such views that deny laws most of their pushiness and explanatory force, questions about determinism and human freedom simply need to be approached afresh.

 

[ThomasT]

I'm still trying to understand Bohm's philosophy of why he favoured a monistic picture.

Well, it makes sense, I think, to entertain the idea of a fundamental seamless medium, from which a vast hierarchy of particulate media has emerged over the eons.

A general guideline why he felt that in general there was something "deeper" underlying this wave-particle duality in QM is Bohm's quotes in this Hiley piece:

In the same section of his book, Bohm draws attention to what he calls 'a serious problem' that confronts us when the theory is extended to deal with more than one particle. The problem with N particles is that the wave function is not in ordinary 3-dimensional space, but instead, in an abstract 3N-dimensional configuration space. While of course this space is logically consistent, the concept of a wave in a 3N-dimensional space is far from physically obvious. At this stage Bohm simply regarded his proposals as an artifice that could be used provisionally until a better theory emerges "in which everything is expressed once more in ordinary 3-dimensional space". This problem of configuration space was eventually resolved by introducing the notion of 'active information' . However there remains a deeper problem as Bohm points out:

Finally, our model in which wave and particle are regarded as basically different entities, which interact in a way that is not essential to their modes of being, does not seem very plausible. The fact that wave and particle are never found separately suggests instead that they are both different aspects of some fundamentally new kind of entity which is likely to be quite different from a simple wave or a simple particle, but which leads to these two limiting manifestations as approximations that are valid under appropriate conditions.

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley/History_of_Bohm_s_QT.pdf

Interesting stuff. And really hard in that seriously addressing these considerations requires a depth and breadth of knowledge that I'll never have. Thanks for the link.

 

[bohm2]

I posted Paul Davie's piece before, discussing "The physics of downward causation". Here are some interesting quotes from that piece that seems to have some relevance to this discussion:

Some emergent phenomena are so striking that it is tempting to explain them by encapsulating (ii) as a separate causal category. The term ‘downward causation’ has been used in this context. The question then arises as to whether this is just another descriptive convenience, or whether downward causation ever involves new sorts forces or influences (as was certainly the case in most versions of biological vitalism). In the cases cited above, the answer is surely no, but what about more dramatic examples, such as the mind-body interaction? Could we ever explain in all cases how brain cells fire without taking into account the mental state of the subject? If minds make a difference in the physical world (as they surely do), then does this demand additional, genuinely new, causes (forces?) operating at the neuronal level, or will all such ‘mental causation’ eventually be explained, as in the case of vortex motion, in terms of the openness of the brain to its environment and the action of coherent boundary conditions (i.e. (ii) above)?

He repeats this theme in this sentence below:

For emergence to become more than just a way of organizing the subject matter of physics, there has to be a clear-cut example of a new type of force, or at any rate a new causative relation, and not just the same old forces at work in novel ways. Unless, that is, those forces are being subordinated in turn to some other, new, forces.

Davies seems pretty skeptical about 'downward causation' within present-day physics:

...we must be aware of the fact that physics is not a completed discipline, and top-down causation may be something that would not show up using current methods of enquiry. There is no logical impediment to constructing a whole-part dynamics in which local forces are subject to global rules. (But)..any attempt to introduce explicitly global variables into local physics would necessarily come into conflict with existing purely local theories of causation, with all sorts of ramifications.

Davies then suggests a "different mechanism of downward causation that avoids the problem of coming into conflict with existing local theories":

The much-vaunted wave–particle duality of quantum mechanics conceals a subtlety concerning the meaning of the terms. Particle talk refers to hardware: physical stuff such as electrons. By contrast, the wave function that attaches to an electron encodes what we know about the system. The wave is not a wave of ‘stuff,’ it is an information wave. Since information and ‘stuff’ refer to two different conceptual levels, quantum mechanics seems to imply a duality of levels akin to mind-brain duality...My suggestion is to take downward causation seriously as a causal category, but it comes at the expense of introducing either explicit top-down physical forces or changing the fundamental categories of causation from that of local forces to a higher-level concept such as information...As remarked already, many authors have suggested that the universe should be regarded as a gigantic computer, or information-processing system, and that perhaps information is more primitive than matter, underpinning the laws of physics...

The physics of downward causation

http://www.ctnsstars.org/conferences/papers/The%20physics%20of%20downward%20causation.pdf

 

[apeiron]

My intention was to clarify my definitions of determinism and free will.

Fine. So the essence of freewill is the implication that "the choice could have been otherwise". All this actually requires is that we are aware of a variety of options and are able to weigh them up in some fashion so we pick the course of action that is, by some criteria, "the best". It does not require that we defy the laws of physics. Or make a different choice when faced with the same essential situation a second time.

What causes us to act in one way, rather than another, is a proper consideration of definite alternatives. Which - to use a crude analogy - is a software deal. We may need the hardware to run the software, but it is an enabling cause rather than the effective cause - a necessary, but not sufficient, condition.

So even if it is "determinism all the way down to the micro-causes" (which it isn't), you can't conflate the material cause (the hardware level of description) with that of the formal cause (the software in this analogy). The reason I pick option A over option B is due not to some configuration of particles but because there is some reason, due to learning, why I anticipate it makes the better choice. This is the actual cause "determining" my action. And I could have chosen otherwise (in principle, if not very likely in practice).

Now, if we take free will to refer to the "freedom to have done otherwise given certain past states", then this would imply the possibility of the occurrence of anomalous (wrt a deterministic index) configurations in the index. The freedom to have done otherwise also has implications wrt the effects of one's actions. That is, if one could have done otherwise, then wouldn't it also hold that one's actions could have produced effects other than what they did? And so on wrt any given state of affairs. There would thus be no imperative or invariant relationship between adjacent configurations, or between degrees of congruency and distance in the index. There would be nothing preventing configurations from occasionally repeating.

Why do you say the same decision can have different results? The whole point about the notion of will is that it is about the power to create a desired result.

You are arguing that micro-causal determinism means that human intelligent choices have just the illusion of being free (free from micro-causal determinism).

Yet the situation is quite obviously the reverse. Humans have the power to make intelligent choices that over-ride the simplicities of the material world.

There is a stapler on my desk. The material world has no choice but that it will remain where it is. If some event were to disturb its position, like an earthquake (not impossible at the moment ), then that would be arbitrary, not a deliberate choice.

But I can make a choice to raise the stapler high, shift it about, leave it alone. In some "place" that is not evident in any analysis of the material micro-causes, I can entertain a range of definite alternatives and make a selection guided by some criteria.

This is the reality that any modelling of causes has to deal with. So an analysis (and conclusions) based on micro-causal determinism is simply inadequate to the facts. It cannot say why a choice was, so how can it rule out why a choice was not. It is mute on the paths taken either way.

Although it is true - retrospectively - that an ardent determinist might go back and say this was the path that was taken. Now given these "antecedent events", how could anything else have resulted except that which we saw as the result? But this is a retrocausal explanation, one where the means are being justified in terms of the ends because the chosen causal view is not privvy to the actual critical events which were taking place at the level of the brain's "information processing".

For determinism to mean anything here, past states have to predict future states. The reasons for what happens (the causes of the effects) have to be clearly situated in the antecedents as you say. And when it comes to classical mechanics - the billiard ball view of the world - then this kind of simplistic view of a system is sufficient to model the situation.

But with complexity of the kind we face with human minds, where the causes are an interaction of past experience and future expectancies, and where they are more formal than material, we need a larger account of the causality than simple determinism. The billiard ball view cannot see why some choice gets made as "being the best of a set of alternatives" in advance of the choice happening. There is nothing to link one configuration to the next.

So your claimed relation of uc1 --> uc2 does not obtain, except as a post-hoc observation. There is not the information content in uc1 to actually produce, say uc2, rather than uci.

Again, for billiard balls, using Newton's universal laws of motion, we can predict from material configurations. But humans can "defy" those universal laws (at least enough to shift a stapler about at will). So there are now further causes at play which are invisible to a strictly Newtonian analysis.

Retrospectively, the Newtonian can find no actual general breech of the laws as all the excursions are highly localised, and fully paid for by a local acceleration of entropy dissipation. But the choice to pay that cost, generate that local excursion, was that of a human brain/mind, whose formal and final causes are not visible to a Newtonian analysis (which explicitly rejects non-universal varieties formal and final cause).

 

[apeiron]

Davies seems pretty skeptical about 'downward causation' within present-day physics:

In fact, the problem is really that he sees it as "trivial" - so obvious that you have to wonder what the fuss is about.

Davies: Sometimes physicists use the language of whole-part causation for ease of description. For example, a ball rolling down a hill implies that each of the ball’s atoms is accelerated according to the state of the ball as a whole. But it would be an abuse of language to say that the rotating ball caused a specific atom to move the way it did; after all, the ball is the sum of its atoms. What makes the concept ‘ball’ meaningful in this case is the existence of (non-local) constraints that lock the many degrees of freedom together, so that the atoms of the ball move as a coherent whole and not independently. But the forces that implement these constraints are themselves local fields, so in this case whole-part causation is effectively trivial in nature. Similar remarks apply to other examples where ‘wholes’ enjoy well-defined quasi-autonomy, such as whirlpools and electric circuits.

The situation is different again in the case of spontaneous self-organization, such as the Bénard instability, or the laser, where atomic oscillators are dragooned into lockstep with a coherent beam of light. But even here, the essential phenomenon can be accounted for entirely in terms of local interactions plus non-local constraints.

This is the essence of it. Downward causality is "just constraints". And they "emerge" though bottom-up construction. All they actually do is limit local degrees of freedom. So big deal.

Yet then this understanding about causality leads on to things which are a big deal. For a start, it says that localised properties or other forms of local definiteness have to actually undergo a history of development. And then, logically, they have to be in turn the kinds of local properties/entities that continue to construct the globally prevailing set of constraints. It is a mutally complementary story. The whole has to make the parts that make the whole that makes the parts, etc.

So instead of the usual ontology of an existence that just exists, we have a system that self-organises through the interaction of global constraints and local degrees of freedom. Physically, that is a very different picture of reality. The material atoms and the formal laws of physics have to arise co-operatively, via their mutually self-causing interaction.

It also then leads on to a proper analysis of complexity as systems that can construct their own local constraints (again, the epistemic cut issue of various forms of information - genes, words, membranes, pores, etc - being able to create non-holonomic constraints that limit ordinary material processes, Pattee's rate dependent dynamics).

Davies: In a sense, global principles may be said to emerge from local physics, but most physicists see things the other way round, preferring to regard global principles as somehow more fundamental.

This is the mistake - to seek to make one aspect of systems causality more fundamental than the other. What is fundamental is instead the dichotomy, the fact that you have two kinds of cause that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive in interaction. Each is creating its other (so that it can itself be created). A virtuous circle in which both the local and the global are matchingly fundamental.

Davies: Let me know turn to the other sense of downward causation: the relationship between different conceptual levels describing the same physical system. In common discourse we often refer to higher levels exercising causal efficacy over lower. For example, mind-brain interaction: ‘I felt like moving my arm, so I did.’ Here the mental realm of feelings and volitions is expressed as exercising causal efficacy over flesh. Another example is hardware versus software in computing. Consider the statement: ‘The program is designed to find the smallest prime number greater than one trillion and print out the answer.’ In this case the higher-level concept ‘program’ appears to call the shots over what an electronic gizmo and printer and paper does.

Here, Davies slips into treating downward cause (limiting constraints) as now a variety of upward cause (material construction, deterministic action, effective cause).

It is confusing as it is possible for this kind of material/effective cause to pop out at higher levels of hierarchical organisation. We can talk about new properties emerging that "do things" in the sense of locally making something happen (rather than globally limiting such degrees of freedom).

But this is no longer talking about downward causation. It is talking about upward causation at a higher scale of description. The two concepts must be kept separate.

So the naive folk psychology description of a movement of the arm is that there is an "I" who felt like doing it. A neuroscience description would instead look for a set of constraints (some global attentional/intentional state) in interaction with some set of local degrees of freedom (all the memories and habits involved in constructing a movement such as moving an arm).

Davies: A more dramatic example of mind-brain causation comes from the field of neurophysiology. Recent work by Max Bennett (Bennett & Barden, 2001) in Australia has determined that neurones continually put out little tendrils that can link up with others and effectively rewire the brain on a time scale of 20 minutes! This seems to serve the function of adapting the neuro-circuitry to operate more effectively in the light of various mental experiences (e.g. learning to play a video game). To the physicist this looks deeply puzzling. How can a higher-level phenomenon like ‘experience,’ which is also a global concept, have causal control over microscopic regions at the sub-neuronal level? The tendrils will be pushed and pulled by local forces (presumably good old electromagnetic ones). So how does a force at a point in space (the end of a tendril) ‘know about,’ say, the thrill of a game?

There are just so many examples like this from neuroscience. Globally a constraint is formed (master this game) and locally this shapes up the habits/memories needed to construct the capacity for such action. The ends produces the means.

Davies: Information enters into science in several distinct ways. So far, I have been discussing the wave function in quantum mechanics. Information also forms the statistical basis for the concept of entropy, and thus underpins the second law of thermodynamics (information should not come into existence in a closed system). In biology, genes are regarded as repositories of information – genetic databanks. In this case the information is semantic; it contains coded instructions for the implementation of an algorithm. So in molecular biology we have the informational level of description, full of language about constructing proteins according to a blueprint, and the hardware level in terms of molecules of specific atomic sequences and shapes. Biologists flip between these two modes of description without addressing the issue of how information controls hardware – a classic case of downward causation.

Fortunately some biologists do address this question. Those that are systems scientists and familiar with the epistemic cut, semiosis, and other such expanded models of causality.

Davies: Most physicists are sceptical of downward causation, because they believe there is ‘no room’ in existing theories of causation for additional forces.

And they would be correct in that downward causation is not about "forces" (local material effective cause) but strictly only about global constraint (formal and final cause).

Davies: Another way to escape the strictures of causal closure is to appeal to the openness of some physical systems. As I have already stressed, top-down talk refers not to vitalistic augmentation of known forces, but rather to the system harnessing existing forces for its own ends. The problem is to understand how this harnessing happens, not at the level of individual intermolecular interactions, but overall – as a coherent project. It appears that once a system is sufficiently complex, then new top-down rules of causation emerge.

This is repeating the mistake of trying to make one pole of a dichotomy more fundamental than the other (when each has to be fundamental as the definition of either pole has to be both complementary and mutually exclusive).

So a systems view is closed in the sense that both the local and global are equally fundamental. But also both emerge, because they emerge from each other. So in another sense, this is an open, developmental view.

That is why systems thinking is based on Peirce's notion of vagueness (and Anaximander's notion of the apeiron). Everything emerges. But the only possible results are dichotomistic. The only system that can develop is one that is self-making in that its locally constructing degrees of freedom are of the kind that can make (and in return, be made by) some prevailing, coherent, network of constraints.

Davies: A possible solution of the cosmological constant problem comes from top-down causation. Suppose this quantity, normally denoted Λ, is not a constant at all, but a function of the total amount of information that the universe has processed since the beginning.

This is an excellent concrete example of how a different systems model of causality can underpin new physics.

Davies: My suggestion is to take downward causation seriously as a causal category, but it comes at the expense of introducing either explicit top-down physical forces or changing the fundamental categories of causation from that of local forces to a higher-level concept such as information.

As said, downward causation is about constraint and should not be conflated with the idea of "some kind of higher level force". Nor is it more fundamental than local forces, or bottom-up material/effective causation.

So yes, take downward causation seriously. But see it as a "different but mutual" form of causation - the missing half of the current story.

It is just exactly what Davies starts out as describing as "trivial" because it is so obvious. But the consequences of taking it seriously are not trivial.

 

[bohm2]

I don't understand this part by Davies:

"perhaps information is more primitive than matter, underpinning the laws of physics".

What does this mean?

1. Is Davies implying that matter really is just information, or does he mean just our information about matter?

2. Doesn't information require something to be informed? Isn't all information embodied in some more basic "physical" stuff?

I'm having difficulties understanding this, which is why I had trouble understanding the C. Fuchs piece, I think.

 

[apeiron]

I don't understand this part by Davies:

"perhaps information is more primitive than matter, underpinning the laws of physics".

What does this mean?

I think the way to interpret this is that information is more general than matter. So matter is something that arises as the local degrees of freedom in a particular universe, information would be our way to count the degrees of freedom that exist in any kind of universe.

As a more fundamental level of talking about the same thing - local degrees of freedom - information may hope to make a connection with a more general theory of causation (one that for example includes "meaning").

Thermodynamics has already founded itself in information theoretic terms (and now semiotically as "infodynamics"). It is no longer about particle kinetics or the flow of a material substance like caloric, but instead framed more generally in terms of information (and entropy).

You then have the whole holography movement which is about the geometry of constraints.

1. Is Davies implying that matter really is just information, or does he mean just our information about matter?

You are trying to imagine information as just another kind of localised substance. The whole point of the information theoretic approach is that it instead brings in the contextuality of any kind of local existence. Downward causation again. Matter does not exist as such. Instead it is potential (in)formed.

2. Doesn't information require something to be informed? Isn't all information embodied in some more basic "physical" stuff?

Yes, there must always be something "more fundamental". Which is what the notions of vagueness and apeiron are all about. But if you keep just replacing one kind of fundamental substance (like matter) with some other more fundamental substance (like information) you are stuck in the mindset of its being turtles all the way down. That is the logical bind that must be escaped.

Information theory is all about the questions that can be asked. Before something is said, anything could be the case. The degrees of freedom are un-limited. But as soon as a question is posed, there is a clear division into what is, and what is not.

Information theory is about the most effective kind of question asking - the limit case of binary choices where you reduce things to the crispest possible dichotomy (mutually exclusive choices) of yes/no.

Obviously information theory arose in the context of human communication, but it has now been generalised to where it is about the questions a material context can ask of its physical locations. "Hey, little point of spacetime, is there anything there I can count as an event, or not?"

Beyond the Planck scale of course, the answers become indeterminate.

 

[ThomasT]

Fine. So the essence of freewill is the implication that "the choice could have been otherwise".

I don't know if this is the essence of freewill, but "could have chosen/done otherwise given the same antecedent condition(s)" is the definition or implication that's problematic because it in turn implies that 'out of order' or repetitious or anomalous configurations are possible -- which contradicts deterministic evolution (at least wrt the way I've defined it). That is, it implies an indeterministic or nondeterministic evolution -- which isn't in and of itself a problem, but becomes a problem in light of observations, imo, insofar as they're consistent with an orderly evolution of the world presumably ultimately determined by fundamental dynamical law(s).

All this actually requires is that we are aware of a variety of options and are able to weigh them up in some fashion so we pick the course of action that is, by some criteria, "the best". It does not require that we defy the laws of physics. Or make a different choice when faced with the same essential situation a second time.

I agree that that's what we do, and that that doesn't conflict with determinism. But we're considering what it means to say that "given the certain conditions/configurations antecedent to our choice/action, then we could have chosen/done otherwise".

... even if it is "determinism all the way down to the micro-causes" (which it isn't), ...

It isn't known that it isn't. The microcosm is inferred by some to be evolving indeterministically or nondeterministically because the outcomes of some measurements are unpredictable and the outcomes of most measurements are only probabilistically predictable. Whether the universe is actually evolving deterministically or indeterministically, wrt any and all scales, is, imo, an unanswerable question. Though we could probably come to some agreement regarding which is the more reasonable assumption.

... you can't conflate the material cause (the hardware level of description) with that of the formal cause (the software in this analogy).

I'm not considering the problem in those terms. The idea was to get a simple abstract statement of how a deterministically evolving universe would look and then consider the implications of free will wrt that -- to avoid the sort of confusing dialogue that often clouds these sorts of issues.

The reason I pick option A over option B is due not to some configuration of particles but because there is some reason, due to learning, why I anticipate it makes the better choice.

There are different levels of reasons and reasoning. I'm not disputing that. The idea was to transcend that. "Configuration" refers to "spatial configuration" and it can refer to micro particles or waves in media or both or ponderable objects or ... etc.

I'm asking the question:
What does deterministic evolution look like, in the abstract, and what would that evolution look like if we "could have done otherwise". Or, in other words, how can I define deterministic evolution so as to be able to ascertain what free will must mean, must entail, wrt it.

And I could have chosen otherwise (in principle, if not very likely in practice).

Yes, but only in a nondeterministically evolving universe. That's all I'm saying. So, if you accept that, then the next consideration is whether the evidence is in favor of deterministic or nondeterministic evolution.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that uc1 --> uc2 is an explanation of anything. It's just the way that a deterministic evolution would look in my definition. So if free will entails something other than uc1 --> uc2, ie., if it entails the possibility of anomalous configurations in the index (uc1 --> uci), then either the universe is evolving indeterministically or there's no free will of the sort "could have done otherwise".

 

[Pythagorean]

Willpower conflicts with determinism intuitively, but willpower also conflicts with a stochastic universe: if there's no reliable causal interactions, willpower is rendered impotent.

This discussion seems to be veering away from the wave function, though

 

[ThomasT]

This discussion seems to be veering away from the wave function, though

Bohm2 was also concerned about implications wrt Bohmian Mechanics. Which brings in nonlocality. And then Bell's theorem. And then superdeterminism and free will (in some views).

Anyway Bohm2 is pretty much directing the discussion, so I suppose that's why it's been allowed to deal with apparently peripheral issues.

Willpower conflicts with determinism intuitively, but willpower also conflicts with a stochastic universe: if there's no reliable causal interactions, willpower is rendered impotent.

There's already agreement here that we do make choices, and that those choices affect the future. The question is whether or not our wills are free in the sense that we could have chosen/done otherwise given the same circumstances.

 

[Pythagorean]

There's already agreement here that we do make choices, and that those choices affect the future. The question is whether or not our wills are free in the sense that we could have chosen/done otherwise given the same circumstances.

We're on the same page. The discussion is about "how" those choices evolve. Determinisitcally... not... or "some middle ground"? The concept of willpower as we define it seems to conflict with either of the extreme cases, to me; that was the point of my last post.

"Some middle ground" makes the problem much more difficult; now we have to assay which processes, at what level, are deterministic. It appears to us, generally, that the classical questions are about deterministic processes, while modern questions tend to require us to question our concept of determinism. But as far as we know, the brain is ultraclassical, so we would expect behavior associated with it to be more deterministic.

But we also know that chemical processes can be dissipative, that there's a quasiclassical realm (nature doesn't divide classical from quantum as neatly as we do)... and it can be modeled non-deterministically. This doesn't necessarily give one hope for willpower though, unless you think your will is expressed completely through protein cascades and kinase catalysm.

 

[bohm2]

With respect to the "space" in which the wave function evolves, am I understanding these 4 positions accurately? If you favour one, which one do you favour and why?

1. David Albert:3N-dimensional space realism.
The space in which any realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is necessarily going to depict the history of the world as playing itself out … is configuration-space. And whatever impression we have to the contrary (whatever impression we have, say, of living in a 3-dimensional space, or in a 4-dimensional space-time) is somehow flatly illusory...In reality, there is just a single 3N-dimensional wavefunction, and the division of reality into separate three-dimensional objects, including organisms, is just the product of our internal representation.

Problem: Why does the world appear 3-dimensional (or 4-dimensional if space-time) to us? What does N represent in 3N space (what is the space a configuration of, if not the particles)? (For Albert all that exists is a single particle, evolving one way or another in a very high-dimensional space). Maudlin finds this view hard to swallow because he finds it "obscure how something happening at a point (such as a particle occupying a point or a field being concentrated near a point) could be a complexly structured physical state of affairs...it is not easy to understand how those physical structures could constitute cats, or chairs, or people."

2. Monton/Lewis:3-dimensional space is fundamental. The 3N-dimensional space is an illusion/false as wave function is only a mathematical tool
While their arguments are somewhat different, both claim that the world really is 3-dimensional and the 3N-dimensional space is a kind of an illusion for different reasons. While Monton flatly rejects the reality of 3-N space ("the wave function is no more real than the numbers-such as 2 or p"), Lewis rules it out by arguing that the "dimensionality" of configuration space defining the wavefunction is not really "spatial". Both seem to deny the reality of the wave function.

Problem: Predictions of QM depend on the 3N-dimensional space that get lost in the 3-dimensional representation (e.g. information about correlations among different parts of the system, that are experimentally observed are left out).

3. T. Maudlin:3N-dimensional space is a mathematical tool but the wave function is "real" (in a unique way)
There are two distinct fundamental spaces (3-dimensional and 3N-dimensional), each with its own structure. What’s more, each space must possesses additional structure beyond what is normally attributed to it. Further structure is needed to ground the connections between the two fundamental spaces, saying which parts and dimensions of the high-dimensional space correspond to which parts and dimensions of ordinary space, and which axes of configuration space correspond to which particle.

Problem: Adds additional fundamental structure, making it less elegant/more complex.

Maudlin argues, that's fine, because such structure is needed to make an informationally complete description, from which "every physical fact about the situation can be recovered". With respect to the wavefunction structure, Maudlin doesn't make a commitment but suggests that it may be unlike anything else (sorta "physical"/real but in a unique/different way), kind of "in its own metaphysical category". He does appear (if I understand him and those that discuss his views) to regard configuration space as only a mathematical tool; however, he also regards the wave function as more than just a probability wave, even though we don't have direct access to it. This doesn't bother him as he writes: "If our only access to the wavefunction is via its effect on the particles, and if the connection to the lived world is primarily through the particles, then we are not constrained about the physical nature of the wavefunction."


4. Bohm:3N-dimensional space is a "real" information field represented in a "mind-like" entity represented by the wave function.
3-N space is an abstract multi-dimensional "informational space" that guides a particle evolving in 3-dimensional space.

Problem: How can an "informational field" guide the particle? How does it interact with it to inform it? The field acts on the particles but particle doesn't act on the field. Brown has argued that this goes against Einstein's action-reaction principle. Einstein wrote it is "contrary to the mode of scientific thinking...to conceive of a thing...which acts itself, but which cannot be acted upon."

Regardless this ontology requires far greater intrinsic complexity to be given to particles like electrons, etc. This leads to russian dolls and problem of infinite regress. Bohm writes:

In analogy to what has been said about human experiences, the particles constituting matter in general may be considered to represent a more gross (explicate) somatic level of activity, while the Schrodinger wave field corresponds to a finer, subtler, more implicate and 'mind-like' level. In human experience however, it has been proposed that each 'mind-like' level can be regarded as a somatic bearer of form when seen from a yet finer and more subtle level. This would imply firstly that the information represented by the Schrodinger wave field is being 'carried' by a finer and subtler level of matter that has not yet been revealed more directly. But even more important, it also implies that there may be a finer and more subtle level of information that guides the Schrodinger field, as the information on the Schrodinger field guides the particles. But this in turn is a yet more subtle 'somatic' form, which is acted on by a still more subtle kind of information, and so on. Such a hierarchy could in principle go on indefinitely. This means, of course, that the current quantum mechanical laws are only simplifications and abstractions from a vast totality, of which we are only 'scratching the surface'. That is to say, in physical experiments and observations carried out this far, deeper levels of this totality have not yet revealed themselves.

http://www.implicity.org/Downloads/Bohm_meaning+information.pdf
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8345/1/dimensions.pdf
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfop0257/papers/Finding.pdf
http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/north/QM_for_volume.pdf
http://spot.colorado.edu/~monton/BradleyMonton/Articles_files/qm%203n%20d%20space%20final.pdf
http://vimeo.com/4607553 (Maudlin video-Can the world be only wave-function?)

 

[bohm2]

I found the debate on the reality of the "quantum potential" between Bohm/Hiley versus some "Bohmians", interesting. Hiley writes:

I think this adjective takes its meaning from a particular view strongly advocated by Dürr, Goldstein and Zengi (DGZ), who have actually coined the phrase "Bohmian mechanics". Their take on the Bohm formalism is what I call mechanistic minimalism. That is they take a position that attempts to keep as many of the traditional features of a mechanistic view of physics as possible, introducing the minimum number of assumptions that seem necessary to generate the formalism...The choice of the term "Bohmian mechanics" is rather unfortunate because Bohm himself did not think the quantum formalism suggested a mechanistic interpretation. In his classic book Quantum Theory, Bohm wrote under the section entitled 'The Need for a Nonmechanical Description' "This means that the term quantum mechanics is very much a misnomer. It should, perhaps, be called quantum nonmechanics"

To summarise this section then, let me emphasise that the differences between the advocates of Bohmian mechanics and our own approach is not about the need to have a account of the actual, but about what form this account should take. Clearly such a choice is largely decided by what each group regards as an acceptable physical explanation. There is no dispute about the form of the equations. Where Bohm and I differ from many advocates of Bohmian mechanics is the attitude we adopted to the formalism. Our long period of working with the formalism and reflecting on how it works has led us to believe that rather than a simple return to a mechanistic picture something much more subtle is involved. We tried to bring this out in our book but clearly we have not got across our message!

Some Bohmians question the concept of "quantum potential" partly because of it's "bizarre properties" which include some of the following:

1. The quantum potential has no external source so that there is nothing for the particle to 'push against'. The energy is internal so it's role “it is more like the role the gravitational field plays in general relativity where the gravitational energy curves space-time itself.”

2. The quantum potential does not arise directly from the Hamiltonian and therefore does not appear explicitly in the algebraic equations (8) and (9). (see links for equations) The quantum potential only appears when we project equation (9) into a particular representation space. This is even more like gravitation where the 'force' appears only when we project the geodesics into a Euclidean space. It is only in this space that we see the deflected trajectories revealing the presence of the gravitational force.

3. The quantum potential is not changed by multiplying the field, ψ by a constant. This can be seen by examining the mathematical form of the quantum potential given by equation... This means that the quantum potential is independent of the magnitude of ψ and so is independent of the field intensity. This in turn means that its effect can be very large even when the amplitude of the field is very small. Because of this, the effect of the potential need not fall off as the distance increases and this is just the property required for an explanation of the EPR correlations.

4. Because there is nothing to push against we should not regard the quantum potential as giving rise to an efficient cause, ('pushing and pulling') but it should be regarded more in the spirit of providing an example of Aristotle’s formative cause...The form is provided from within but it is, of course, shaped by the environment...The quantum potential carries information about the environment in which the particle finds itself. For example, in the electron two-slit experiment, the quantum potential carries information about the two slits, their size, shape and distance apart. Thus it carries information about the whole experimental arrangement. Thus the quantum potential reflects the experimental conditions...it is important to emphasise once again that our concept of information is not 'information for us' but objective information for the particle...

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley/Vexjo2001W.pdf

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley/ActInfoTeleWein.pdf

 

[ThomasT]

@ bohm2,

I think your scholarship deserves some replies from people more knowledgeable than me, but in lieu of that I'll throw in my two cents again. (By the way, I think your questions would be ok in the quantum physics forum, and you might get more replies there.)

Wrt your post #91, I prefer the view (2.) that 3D space is fundamental, ie., nature/reality is 3 dimensional wrt any and all scales of behavior. I think that the development of QM is conceptually based on this view, but that imaginary 'spaces' are required for calculation purposes.

Wrt 1., I've never liked (understood) the way Albert interpreted QM.

Wrt 3., I don't see (understand) the reason for assuming that reality consists of 2 distinct fundamental spaces.

Wrt 4., it makes sense to me to think of reality in terms of hierarchy of wave fields (ie., as far as we can be concerned, a hierarchy of particulate media), the more fundamental of which emerged from disturbances in a seamless fundamental medium.

It might be, as Bohm states, that " ... in physical experiments and observations carried out this far, deeper levels of this totality have not yet revealed themselves", however if reality is 3D, and if there is at least one fundamental wave dynamic, then it seems to me that this would be more or less evident wrt all scales. And this does seem to me to be the case, which presents a problem, imo, for the Bohmian view, or anyway its theoretical realization, insofar as the nonmechanical action-at-a-distance of BM is concerned.

------------------

Wrt your post #92 and the quantum potential:

While the wave equation and wave function of standard QM do contribute to some very reasonable inferences regarding the deep nature of reality, I find it difficult to associate the quantum potential with a fundamental physical concept. That is, I don't have any good ideas about what it might mean.

Have you made any progress in developing your own interpretation of it?

 

[bohm2]

Wrt your post #92 and the quantum potential:

While the wave equation and wave function of standard QM do contribute to some very reasonable inferences regarding the deep nature of reality, I find it difficult to associate the quantum potential with a fundamental physical concept. That is, I don't have any good ideas about what it might mean.

Have you made any progress in developing your own interpretation of it?

I'm trying to better understand both Maudlin's and Bohm's interpretations. I find both of them attractive. I'm not sure why exactly? Maybe because it seems like the wave function lies somewhere in between what we normally call "physical" and "mental". I think this is Maudlin's interpretation? The closest objects I can think of that are arguably seen to lie in this category are mathematical objects in the Platonic sense, I think? A recent interesting paper suggesting this, I think, is the paper below. I haven't read it fully, though. Maybe someone who read it or is willing to read it can comment on it. I still think though that a "theory of everything" (assuming that is within our cognitive reach) would be able to show how objects like minds can exist/emerge in the universe.

Interpreting quantum nonlocality as platonic information

The "hidden variables" or "guiding equation" explanation for the measurement of quantum nonlocality (entanglement) effects can be interpreted as instantiation of Platonic information. Because these Bohm-deBroglie principles are already external to the material objects that they theoretically affect, interpreting them as Platonic is feasible. Taking an approach partially suggested by Quantum Information Theory which views quantum phenomena as sometimes observable-measurable information, this thesis defines hidden variables/guiding equation as information.

http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/vi...kAgQes1Uog#search="maudlin quantum potential"

 

[ThomasT]

Interpreting quantum nonlocality as platonic information
The "hidden variables" or "guiding equation" explanation for the measurement of quantum nonlocality (entanglement) effects can be interpreted as instantiation of Platonic information. Because these Bohm-deBroglie principles are already external to the material objects that they theoretically affect, interpreting them as Platonic is feasible. Taking an approach partially suggested by Quantum Information Theory which views quantum phenomena as sometimes observable-measurable information, this thesis defines hidden variables/guiding equation as information.

Our universe seems to be evolving in accordance with the principle of locality -- and yet there isn't any "local hidden variable" explanation of entanglement stats. In my view this is because those stats result from the measurement of a nonvariable 'hidden' or underlying parameter (the relationship between the entangled entities) by a variable global measurement parameter (which, in eg. optical Bell tests, is the angular difference between crossed polarizer settings).

The term "quantum nonlocality" has a couple of connotations wrt standard QM, neither of which refer to or imply action-at-a-distance or FTL transmissions between the entangled entities.

Imho, this "Platonic information" approach is the wrong approach to understanding the essence of quantum entanglement.

I'm trying to better understand both Maudlin's and Bohm's interpretations. I find both of them attractive. I'm not sure why exactly?

After some consideration, I think that Maudlin is saying that in order to fully understand reality we need to incorporate both our common sensory apprehension of the world as 3-dimensional, and our formalization of the world, wrt QM, in N-dimensional terms. This makes sense, and is thereby attractive, to me.

Bohm's general view, as I currently understand it, is based on the idea that reality is a seamless whole, perhaps arising from a fundamentally seamless medium, involving both particulate (ie., bounded but nonetheless possibly highly complex) structures and wave mechanical principles/laws applicable wrt any medium (particulate or not). This also makes sense, and is thereby attractive, to me.

Maybe because it seems like the wave function lies somewhere in between what we normally call "physical" and "mental".

Imo, thinking about it in those terms will lead to confusion.

I think this is Maudlin's interpretation?

I've interpreted (above) Maudlin's interpretation in a way that makes sense to me, which could be quite wrong (wrt Maudlin's intention anyway). If you think my take on it is wrong, let me know.

The closest objects I can think of that are arguably seen to lie in this category are mathematical objects in the Platonic sense, I think?

Number, that is, our quantitative apprehension of the world, is, I think, rooted in our ability to differentiate between the presence and absence of something and thus the greater or lesser presence of something (hence, counting and counts), and our ability, given the formalisation of counting, to quantify relationships among geometric abstractions of our sensory apprehension of various physical structures.

There's no necessary, fundamental differentiation between physical and mental wrt this as far as I can tell.

A recent interesting paper suggesting this, I think, is the paper below. I haven't read it fully, though.

No doubt, neither have I. It's 144 pages, and you really can't 'speedread' this stuff.

But I do believe that you'll finish it, and understand it, before I'm able to.

I still think though that a "theory of everything" (assuming that is within our cognitive reach) would be able to show how objects like minds can exist/emerge in the universe.

Well, not within the current paradigm, it would seem. My opinion on this is influenced by R. B. Laughlin's and David Pines' "The Theory of Everything". You might check out Laughlin, Pines, et al. "The Middle Way" also.

If minds and mental activity are traceable to physical phenomena, then, while ascertaining the precise mechanics of their emergence might be somewhat problematic, the mechanism of their emergence isn't necessarily an unsolvable mystery.

Anyway, I'm hoping that the relative heavyweights (apeiron, Demystifier, Pythagorean, Ken G, Hurkyl, et al. -- if I left any worthy contributors out I apologize, but they can indelibly etch their names in my memory by contributing some insightful comments here) will present their opinions on your latest considerations. And also please record here any further insights that you might have gotten in contemplating this stuff.

 

[bohm2]

If minds and mental activity are traceable to physical phenomena, then, while ascertaining the precise mechanics of their emergence might be somewhat problematic, the mechanism of their emergence isn't necessarily an unsolvable mystery.

That's arguably part of the problem. What does one mean by "physical"? Physical as understood by present-day physics , by a future physics, occupying space-time? This is the problem about which was discussed in a previous thread talking about the so-called "mind-body problem". I found the arguments put forth by Chomsky, Stoljar, Strawson, Russell, etc. pretty strong. All of them imply that we are actually so ignorant of the nature of the the "physical" that we have no basis to formulate the mind-body problem in any meaningful way. As Strawson puts it:

It may be added, with Russell and others, that although physics appears to tell us a great deal about certain of the general structural or mathematical characteristics of the physical, it fails to give us any real insight into the nature of whatever it is that has these characteristics-apart from making it plain that it is utterly bizarre relative to our ordinary conception of it. It is unclear exactly what this last remark amounts to (is it being suggested that physics is failing to do something it could do?) But it already amounts to something very important when it comes to what is known as the "mind-body problem." For many take this to be the problem of how mental phenomena can be physical phenomena given what we already know about the nature of the physical. And this is the great mistake of our time. The truth is that we have no good reason to think that we know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that mental or experiential phenomena are physical phenomena...How can consciousness be physical, given what we know about what matter is like?" If one thinks this then one is, in Russell's words, "guilty, unconsciously and in spite of explicit disavowals, of a confusion in one's imaginative picture of matter". One thinks one knows more about the nature of matter-of the non-experiential-than one does. This is the fundamental error.

Of course all of them reach different conclusions with respect to what this means regarding the nature of metaphysics/philosophy of mind/body, etc. I think all of them recognize the difficulty of trying to unify consciousness/the mental with present-day physics but hold the view that perhaps as physics/science progresses it will all make sense in the future (assuming it lies within our intellectual ability). That is, the gaps are real but they will progressively be "filled" in as science progresses. One other point I've been thinking as I'm reading this paper is that some (many?) linguists and cognitive scientists view mathematical objects as essentially mental objects so they don't subscribe to the view that such objects exist independent of minds. Chomsky writes:

In its most elementary form, a generative system is based on an operation that takes structures already formed and combines them into a new structure. Call it Merge. Operating without bounds, Merge yields a discrete infinity of structured expressions. Hence Merge, and the condition that it can apply without bound, fall within UG (Universal Grammar)...The conclusion that Merge falls within UG holds whether such recursive generation is unique to the faculty of language or is appropriated from other systems. If the latter, there still must be a genetic instruction to use Merge to form structured linguistic expressions satisfying the interface conditions. Nonetheless, it is interesting to ask whether this operation is language-specific. We know that it is not. The classic illustration is “the mathematical capacity,” which troubled Alfred Russel Wallace 125 years ago because it “is wholly unexplained by the theory of natural selection, and must be due to some altogether distinct cause,” if only because it remained unused. One possibility is that it is derivative from language. If the lexicon is reduced to a single element, then Merge can yield arithmetic in various ways. Speculations about the origin of the mathematical capacity as an abstraction from linguistic operations are familiar, as are criticisms, including apparent dissociation with lesions and diversity of localization. The significance of such phenomena, however, is far from clear. They relate to use of the capacity, not its possession; to performance, not competence. For similar reasons, dissociations do not show that the capacity to read is not parasitic on the language faculty, as Luigi Rizzi points out.

http://www.punksinscience.org/kleanthes/courses/UCY10S/IBL/material/Chomsky_UG.pdf

Edit: I read, "Interpreting quantum nonlocality as platonic information". I was hoping it would be interesting. I didn't find it interesting or useful.

 

[ThomasT]

That's arguably part of the problem. What does one mean by "physical"? Physical as understood by present-day physics , by a future physics, occupying space-time?

The "physical" is that which is and can be defined operationally. There's no particular reason that I know of that 'mental' activity or 'cognition' can't be eventually defined operationally. The main problem is that one can't really trust the accounts of the experiencer of phenomena. But I think that there might be some ideas regarding a way around this problem. Apeiron probably knows something of this. Maybe Pythagorean also.

One other point I've been thinking as I'm reading this paper is that some (many?) linguists and cognitive scientists view mathematical objects as essentially mental objects so they don't subscribe to the view that such objects exist independent of minds.

If objects exist independent of minds, then so must mathematical objects (ie., abstract relationships), I think. For example, there's a relationship between the diameter of a circle and its circumference that exists whether we happen to recognize it or not.

 

[apeiron]

If objects exist independent of minds, then so must mathematical objects (ie., abstract relationships), I think. For example, there's a relationship between the diameter of a circle and its circumference that exists whether we happen to recognize it or not.

I would argue in the spirit of Aristotle's doctrine of hylomorphic form that mathematical "objects" are actually forms - or global constraints. The naturally occurring shapes or organisation of things. And constraints clearly exist out in the real physical world. Or at least as much as do the local degrees of freedom which they give form to, so as to produce actual objects.

So an object = substance + form.
Or in more modern terminology, object = local degrees of freedom + global constraints.

In our minds, we tend to think imagistically of maths in terms of objects - constraints in some embodied form. A circle or triangle is thought of not as a generalised relationship but pictured as some concrete and particular example of a circle of triangle. That is some expanse of something enclosed by a limiting geometry.

But the actual maths itself is not these mental images. It is the formal description of the shapes in terms of various definite constants and relations. It is the apparatus we use to re-construct(!) a constraint of nature as part of our modelling of nature.

Out in the real world, that constraint simply exists as a limit on the material organisation of local degrees of freedom.

This is the key to understanding the wavefunction too I believe.

The temptation is to think of both the particle and its wavefunctions as objects. Concrete, material, particular, definite and localised emboddied forms. So you have two things that actually exist, but which then also seem to require their own set of dimension in order to be located. One needs its 3-space. The other needs its configuration space. And as separate objects, it is unclear how the two interact - what their relation is. Or what relation this duo have to all the other concrete particle/wavefunction pairings.

But if you instead understand the compound nature of objects - the division into bottom-up or constructive degrees of freedom (Aristotle's material and efficient causes) and top-down or global constraints (Aristotle's formal and final causes) - then you can interpret the duality differently.

There is no actual located and material particle. That is just a figment of our "object-projecting" imagination. All that exists in reality at a location are some collection of degrees of freedom.

And then there are all the constraints that bear on these degrees of freedom to limit them to have some concrete form or organisation. The wavefunction represents those constraints - their evolution over time. So the wavefunction "exists" as something physical. But not in the sense of an object. It is part of the constraints that in interaction with local degrees of freedom create the compound event or action we call "a material object".

The collapse of a wavefunction is then nothing more than an increase in those constraints. Decoherence steps up the constraints on some set of degrees of freedom so as to limit them much more strictly.

So talking about 3D vs configuration space, the classical three dimensional space of material objects is a maximally constrained state. Configuration space is a loosening of all possible constraints to describe the same place in terms of maximised local freedoms.

The actual world out there is of course pretty much completely classical. Having grown large and cold, it exists as a highly constrained realm as close as possible to the classical limit. It only looks quantum when returned locally to a very hot or very small scale of existence. This loosens the prevailing state of constraint and reveals the greater degrees of freedom that can exist as limits are relaxed.

Configuration space is then our map of that greater realm of the possible which grounds our (cold and expanded) classical actual. Configuration space did perhaps once exist (around the moment of the big bang when the universe was hot and small and so lacking sharp boundaries to its degrees of freedom). But now it represents a space of the possible more than a space of the actual. 3D seems the more real - it is what we concretely experience. We can only glimpse that greater realm of possibility represented by configuration space when we make observations at the quantum scale.

So yes, our minds wants to think about things in terms of objects. But objects are compounds of local degrees of freedom and global constraints. Even atoms are not real in the sense of being irreducible particles of matter - little actual lumps of stuff. They are the product of an interaction, a localised blend. The same goes too for the void. Spacetime is not an object but again a dynamical interaction, the evolution from possibility to some actuality.

This is the process philosophy view, the systems science view. And it requires a far more abstract notion of what "physically exists". Both global constraints and local degrees of freedom are far more abstract concepts than the "embodied objects" that our minds are so used to picturing.

 

[bohm2]

There is no actual located and material particle. That is just a figment of our "object-projecting" imagination. All that exists in reality at a location are some collection of degrees of freedom...The wavefunction represents those constraints - their evolution over time. So the wavefunction "exists" as something physical. But not in the sense of an object. It is part of the constraints that in interaction with local degrees of freedom create the compound event or action we call "a material object"

I'm having trouble understanding this. You say there are constaints and degrees of freedom as represented by the wave function but doesn't that imply that there is some "stuff" being constrained? How can one talk about constraints if there isn't some thing/object/beable being constrained?

 

[apeiron]

I'm having trouble understanding this. You say there are constaints and degrees of freedom as represented by the wave function but doesn't that imply that there is some "stuff" being constrained? How can one talk about constraints if there isn't some thing/object/beable being constained?

Any "thing" is composed of a mix of degrees of freedom and constraints (in this view). So something that endures as a topological feature would exist in the way a phonon, soliton or other quasi-particle does in condensed matter physics.

There does not have to be a fundamental stuff in the sense of a substance possessing irreducible properties. Constraint can create "stuff" by organising local degrees of freedom.

 

[bohm2]

There does not have to be a fundamental stuff in the sense of a substance possessing irreducible properties. Constraint can create "stuff" by organising local degrees of freedom.

Maybe I didn't word the question properly but I'm just trying to get an intuitive understanding of what ontology your preferred model of QT suggests. Is there anything beyond the wave function itself that plays a role in your interpretation of QT? For instance, in Bohm's model:

1. The output is the the position of particles in 3-space.
2. The algorithm that generates the output is the wave function in configuration space.

What is your output? Is there any room for anything beyond the wave function, itself, in your model; that is, is there anything beyond the wave function that makes direct contact with the world of our experience? If there is, what is it's ontology?

 

[apeiron]

Maybe I didn't word the question properly but I'm just trying to get an intuitive understanding of what ontology your preferred model of QT suggests. Is there anything beyond the wave function itself that plays a role in your interpretation of QT? For instance, in Bohm's model:

1. The output is the the position of particles in 3-space.
2. The algorithm that generates the output is the wave function in configuration space.

What is your output? Is there any room for anything beyond the wave function, in your model? If there is, what is it's ontology?

I don't think I understand what you are trying to ask here. You seem to be focused on the calculational machinery - the epistemology - rather than the ontology of the situation.

What I was arguing for was a definite separation of "objects" into local degrees of freedom and global constraints. And even a wavefunction seems a rather object-like notion - a probablistic view of a particle's uncertainty, the still-to-be determined aspects of its state.

So my interpretation of the wavefunction would be that it is the sum of all the constraints that impinge on "a particle". To even have a wavefunction means that much has already been pinned down already due to a history of constraints on a locale. But there are still degrees of freedom to be determined by "observation".

 

[bohm2]

So my interpretation of the wavefunction would be that it is the sum of all the constraints that impinge on "a particle". To even have a wavefunction means that much has already been pinned down already due to a history of constraints on a locale. But there are still degrees of freedom to be determined by "observation".

So in your version, like in Bohm's, the wave function itself is not enough to account for the existence of objects like cats, tables, etc. You also posit the existence of "particle-like entities" existing in 3-D space (or space-time) that are constrained by the wave function? So your version is unlike Everett's or GRW, where the wave function is everything since you also make use of a particle-like entity (something that lives in 3-D space/space-time)? Or am I misinterpreting you?

 

[apeiron]

So in your version, like in Bohm's, the wave function itself is not enough to account for the existence of objects like cats, tables, etc. You also posit the existence of "particle-like entities" existing in 3-D space (or space-time) that are constrained by the wave function? So your version is unlike Everett's or GRW, where the wave function is everything. You also make use of a particle-like entity (something that lives in 3-D space/space-time)? Or am I misinterpreting you?

Do you think that MWI or GRW are particle-less ontologies? That is not my reading at all. One assumes branching world histories for particles, the other the spontaneous collapse of wavefunctions to create fully-determinate particles. But neither does without particles.

Personally, I don't hold to some single interpretation of QM. I don't think we are there yet.

But I most like a consistent histories approach mixed with elements of decoherence and transactional interpretations. And as I say, the more general systems view of "particles" that would derive from an analogy with the solitons or quasi-particles of condensed matter physics.

So cats and tables are constructed of particles which are pretty definite objects - degrees of freedom trapped early in the big bang by the rapid cooling/expansion of spacetime. Electrons and protons don't seem likely to decay at current ambient cosmic temperatures and scales.

There is a history of constraint that locks these particles into place. But then there is still a fine-grain quantum uncertainty concerning their identity and interactions. At the level of cats and tables, this fuzziness is pretty irrelevant. But at the fine scale of observation, it is still part of reality.

So the division of particle vs wavefunction seems only to distinguish the aspects of a locale that are strongly determined by prior history and the aspects that remain faintly indeterminate. The "surprise" is that this allows in "retrocausality" (as in quantum eraser experiments) and other kinds of non-local weirdness.

This implies that spacetime and causal locality/determinism are in fact emergent features, not fundamental. But clearly, that is the ontology I have been arguing for all along.

So yes, we live in a classical 3+1D world in which a void is populated by particles. But that is the emergent view. The deeper view is the systems one which describes emergent objects (and the vacuum is also such an object) as the product of local degrees of freedom in interaction with global constraints.

 

[bohm2]

Do you think that MWI or GRW are particle-less ontologies? That is not my reading at all. One assumes branching world histories for particles, the other the spontaneous collapse of wavefunctions to create fully-determinate particles. But neither does without particles.

In MWI and the original version of GRW, it was claimed that anything beyond the wave function itself is kind of superfluous, unlike in Bohm's where you have both spaces (3-space and 3-N space). If one takes this view that the wave function is everything then, there's a problem:

Since the proposal is to take the wave function to represent physical objects, it seem natural to take configuration space as the true physical space. But clearly, we do not seem to live in confguration space. Rather, it seems obvious to us that we live in 3 dimensions. Therefore, a proponent of this view has to provide an account of why it seems as if we live in a 3-dimensional space even though we do not. Connected to that problem, we should explain how to "recover the appearances" of macroscopic objects in terms of the wave function.

Primitive Ontology and the Structure of Fundamental Physical Theories

http://www.niu.edu/~vallori/AlloriWfoPaper-Jul19.pdf