Is Consciousness involved in wave function collapse?

[Ken G]

Exactly. I think at least "reality" is something easier for us to define as opposed to "consciousness" which usually leads to various viewpoints on what it really means. I got sort of tired of advocating the idea that our "consciousness" played some major role in the qm process because one usually gets labelled as being mystical :-)

I particularly like your characterization of reality as something that "occurs" rather than something that "is". That simple turn goes a long way toward refocusing the terms appropriately, because most people think consciousness "occurs" rather than "is" while reality "is" rather than "occurs", creating an almost uncrossable gap in the subsequent discussion. Since physics describes dynamics, not being, the standard language immediately makes consciousness something physics can describe, but reality as something that predates the physics, something the physics stems from. So if physics stems from reality, and consciousness stems from physics, consciousness can play no role in reality. However, if everything we describe using physics is a dynamical phenomenon (it "occurs"), and if we use physics to describe reality, why should we not confess to ourselves that anything we can conclude about reality using physics must necessarily be an "occurence" not a "being"? Ergo, physical reality occurs, just like consciousness occurs. And perhaps the two are closer than most recognize in the standard way of thinking.

IMO a great theory and the only "anthropic" theory which makes much sense to me. And i think one of the main reasons it has so few vocal advocates in the scientific community is that it more or less entails rejecting Copernican viewpoint re the place of man or other biology in the universe.

I'm not particularly wild about any variants of the AP, they all seem to represent, as someone once said, a puddle in the street wondering why it so miraculously fits to the shape of the pothole. Everything we know about the universe comes through the filter of our perception, so everything we know must be consistent with our ability to perceive. The AP only seems like something amazing if we imagine that the universe we perceive is the "actual universe", rather than just the universe we perceive. This is not necessarily a mystical viewpoint-- the pragmatist can say the universe we perceive is our definition of universe and the only one we will ever know anything about, but to them I say, "fine-- but note what happened to the AP the moment you defined universe to be that which we are capable of perceiving." Most versions of the AP involve embedding it in other universes we could perceive if we were there, but we can't be there so that explains why we aren't. It seems more rational to me to build an AP by embedding the universe we can perceive into a larger version of that same universe, the aspects of it that we cannot perceive. But this version of the AP makes the question go away without introducing anything predictive, because we are being more honest that the aspects we don't perceive have nothing to say about the ones we do. Whether they even exist as at all is "angels on a pin"-- but then, so is the AP.

 

[rodsika]

Ken, where did you particularly get this idea about definite outcomes needing consciousness to perceive and not in the equations of physics? I haven't heard of it before. What identical concepts did others use? Please enumerate them so we can relate to them. Thanks.

 

[Ken G]

Definite outcomes are not in the equations of quantum mechanics. That is quite well known, it's because the equations of quantum mechanics say that a closed system (like if we could put an experiment and everything involved with it inside a closed box) evolves unitarily. That means that if it starts out in a definite state, it remains always in a definite state. However, that definite state only applies to the whole closed system-- it includes various probabilities of outcomes for the states of its subspaces when those substates "decohere" (meaning they acquire randomized phase relationships with each other when you project from the full state of the closed system onto the subspaces). So a typical "subspace" would be the spin of a particle, say, and when you do a spin measurement you decohere the spin states from each other. But the closed system still has no way to pick out a particular spin state, they are all still there in the equations of quantum mechanics. The picking out of a particular spin state is, in practice, always done only one way: completely manually. That means the experimenter exits the theory of quantum mechanics and just asserts the outcome they perceive, manually throwing away the parts of the wavefunction of the whole system that don't show that outcome. No equation does that, because it is nonunitary. The reason this is necessary is that the perception requires it, and for no other reason, so I merely point out the reason that we have this step at all-- because we are conscious of a need for it.

Now, many-worlds says we shouldn't throw away the parts of the wave function we don't perceive, they are still there but we just don't perceive them. Our perception is seen to be less than the reality. However, this does not make the question of why we perceive what we perceive go away, because a universe with no perception would never need to assert what outcome was perceived to occur. So many-worlds still requires that perception enter the picture, it is the process that picks out one of the many worlds. The need for it is not gone, but the unitary evolution of the unperceived universe is salvaged, pretty much at the cost of empiricism as science's epistemological lychpin.

Another approach is deBroglie-Bohm, which holds that the equations of quantum mechanics cannot be the fundamental dynamical equations, expressly because they have this unpleasant feature of not connecting wiell with single outcomes. In DeBB, the one outcome is completely deterministic, nothing is thrown away and the "manual" step in quantum mechanics is there because quantum mechanics is incomplete. But to complete quantum mechanics, one must simply assume that there is information that is hidden from our view. It is essential to the dynamics that this information be hidden-- if it isn't, the dynamics is different (as in which-way information in a two-slit experiment). So behavior of the system depends on what we can know about it, even though the system is still evolving from a definite state (that we cannot know without changing the evolution) to another definite state. But note this still has not banished a role for perception, because defining what we can know about a system, which affects its evolution, is caught up in how we know things about systems, which relates to perception.

So I believe I have argued with simple logic that neither the equations of quantum mechanics, nor the popular interpretations of what those equations mean, has banished a role of conscious perception, they merely cause its role to crop up in different ways. The bottom line for me is, all of physics, all the language we use to talk about physics, requires that we insert a conscious perceiving agent somewhere in the story, even if that agent is inserted only hypothetically to give us a language we can use to talk about what is happening. So some role of a conscious perceiving agent is absolutely inescapable, even in systems that claim to have banished any need for it.

 

[rodsika]

Ken. This is because you are giving math too much apparent power that something outside it becomes mysterious. But if we would treat math as just a tool. Then the perceiving of definite outcome is natural. The math just models what occurs in superposition.

 

[Coldcall]

Ken G,

RE: "I'm not particularly wild about any variants of the AP, they all seem to represent, as someone once said, a puddle in the street wondering why it so miraculously fits to the shape of the pothole. Everything we know about the universe comes through the filter of our perception, so everything we know must be consistent with our ability to perceive..."

I think PAP is quite different than the other APs. If I'm not mistaken; Wheeler developed PAP as a derivative of his "delayed choice" experiment writ large on a cosmological scale. So in that sense it at least has some sort of experimental grounding even if one can argue that "delayed choice" cannot be scaled up to cosmological proportions. I think "delayed choice" is a demonstration of the (non-communicative) but still retrocausal nature of qm.
And for any version of AP to be even remotely plausible it seems to me one needs to demonstrate retrocausality.

I agree with you in that our understanding of the universe needs to be seen through the lens of our perceptions and not necessarily taken for granted.

Anyways thanks for taking the time; you always provide thought-provoking ideas, and there's nothing mystical about any of this, as far as i can tell :-)

 

[Ken G]

Ken. This is because you are giving math too much apparent power that something outside it becomes mysterious. But if we would treat math as just a tool. Then the perceiving of definite outcome is natural. The math just models what occurs in superposition.

That's more or less the Copenhagen approach, the math is a tool that needs not be taken seriously. Copenhagen is the most empirical of the interpretations, and it tends to attribute these strange effects to the fact that the perceiving agent is a classical object, so there is a "Heisenberg gap" between what we are observing and the instruments we are using to do so. But that doesn't completely escape a role of consciousness, because conscious perceiving agents presumably require classical complexity to function. A conscious atom, were that possible, would have no "Heisenberg gap", instead it would be the classical realm of trajectory and determinism that might seem bizarre to the atom-- but can we seriously imagine that an atom could be conscious? So even though it is classicality, not consciousness, that underpins the Copenhagen approach, we still must attribute our classicality to the fact that we need to be conscious to conceive of physics. The Heisenberg gap is then still a gap between that which can be a conscious perceiving agent, and that which cannot.

 

[rodsika]

That's more or less the Copenhagen approach, the math is a tool that needs not be taken seriously. Copenhagen is the most empirical of the interpretations, and it tends to attribute these strange effects to the fact that the perceiving agent is a classical object, so there is a "Heisenberg gap" between what we are observing and the instruments we are using to do so. But that doesn't completely escape a role of consciousness, because conscious perceiving agents presumably require classical complexity to function. A conscious atom, were that possible, would have no "Heisenberg gap", instead it would be the classical realm of trajectory and determinism that might seem bizarre to the atom-- but can we seriously imagine that an atom could be conscious? So even though it is classicality, not consciousness, that underpins the Copenhagen approach, we still must attribute our classicality to the fact that we need to be conscious to conceive of physics. The Heisenberg gap is then still a gap between that which can be a conscious perceiving agent, and that which cannot.

So it's not even a problem of quantum physics. The question becomes:

"For there to be something to be perceived, there must be a perceiver, why is there a perceiver?"

 

[Ferris_bg]

So it's not even a problem of quantum physics. The question becomes:

"For there to be something to be perceived, there must be a perceiver, why is there a perceiver?"

Because the perceiver WANTs to be there, otherwise there will be nothing.

 

[BruceW]

The philosophers of cosmology John Earman, Ernan McMullin and Jesús Mosterín contend that "in its weak version, the anthropic principle is a mere tautology, which does not allow us to explain anything or to predict anything that we did not already know. In its strong version, it is a gratuitous speculation".
I found this on wikipedia, with reference: Mosterín, Jesús. (2005). Op. cit.
I think I agree with these guys.

 

[Ken G]

Yes, I think they're right on target. Scientists often criticize the mental attitudes of others who do not ask for evidence to support attitudes that allow them to feel like they can make sense out of what is actually a mystery. We should not fall into the same pattern ourselves, it's downright hypocritical.

 

[G01]

The philosophers of cosmology John Earman, Ernan McMullin and Jesús Mosterín contend that "in its weak version, the anthropic principle is a mere tautology, which does not allow us to explain anything or to predict anything that we did not already know. In its strong version, it is a gratuitous speculation".
I found this on wikipedia, with reference: Mosterín, Jesús. (2005). Op. cit.
I think I agree with these guys.

Yes, I think they're right on target. Scientists often criticize the mental attitudes of others who do not ask for evidence to support attitudes that allow them to feel like they can make sense out of what is actually a mystery. We should not fall into the same pattern ourselves, it's downright hypocritical.

(Sorry I disappeared. Got busy with work, but I'm still following the conversation.)I agree with that statement as well. The anthropic principle is not a good scientific argument. It's not falsifiable, and basically amounts to begging the question in many instances.

Have any of you seen this article by Lee Smolin?

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0407213I don't like his alternative theory of cosmological natural selection, but I think his points about the anthropic principle are valid.

 

[yoda jedi]

The problem with the wavefunction being physical, yet collapsing, is that we can't identify any physical processthat causes it to collapse to a single outcome

nonlinear quantum mechanics.
there are various experiments planned to test that.


.

 

[rodsika]

Ken, you said without consciousness to perceive, there is no need to collapse and no measurement problem. But 13 billion years ago. What collapsed the wave function of the big bang in Copenhagen? Or are you saying our having evolved now is able go influence the past and collapse it? Or is if the possible the Big Bang and just prior to human evolution were always in superposition? But how could suns and galaxies even evolve without being in collapsed mode where things have positions?

 

[BruceW]

rodsika - just imagine that the universe followed many-worlds interpretation until humans came along to collapse the wavefunction. Also, collapse does happen retrospectively. That's what quantum eraser experiments have shown.
I personally think it is more likely that any classical object causes collapse. But the predictions of physics would work the same if only humans cause collapse.
(since we don't have any experiments that can distinguish between a human and a lump of organic matter).

 

[Ken G]

I don't like his alternative theory of cosmological natural selection, but I think his points about the anthropic principle are valid.

I concur. I've always said that arguments that go like "we already know X from observation, [and it seems X is needed for life], so I predict the universe will have attribute Y that allows X to be possible, because reliable theory A connects Y to X", is simply a statement of a test of theory A, so hinges on the reliability of theory A, not on any kind of "anthropic argument". This becomes clear if we simply strike out what I put in square brackets-- it has no part in the actual argument, it's just an add-on that makes it sound like we somehow have an example of an anthropic principle.

 

[Ken G]

nonlinear quantum mechanics.
there are various experiments planned to test that.

I'm not very familiar with nonlinear quantum mechanics, what is that?

 

[Ken G]

But how could suns and galaxies even evolve without being in collapsed mode where things have positions?

It seems to me there are 3 basic ways to address this issue. One is Wheeler's approach, explained by BruceW, that collapse happens retroactively when humans make a measurement. Before that, the universe was able to accommodate any of the outcomes, sort of like (in a macroscopic analogy) if you are playing bridge, you have to play in such a way as to accommodate any of the possible lays of the cards that are consistent with what you already know. We imagine that only one lay is the real one, but it wouldn't make any difference to how we play if all possibilities were equally real until we get more information. Another is BruceW's own approach, which is to say that some other process serves as the decider, whether or not there is consciousness present, so there's only one lay of the cards and we just don't know it yet.

I actually take a third approach. I don't think consciousness is doing anything physically active, such that it could "actively collapse" anything. Nor do I think that consciousness is a passive "fly on the wall" to what is physically happening. I think consciousness is part of what the word "physical" even means. All the language we use to do physics comes after we have already passed reality through the filter of our perception/consciousness, so it has left its mark even before we ask the question of what happened-- it is not something that we could point to and say "right there, that's when consciousness altered the outcome." Instead, what is a card, and what is a lay of the cards, are inextricably tied to how we perceive and interpret our reality, thereby making it what we mean by the reality. So when you imagine the Big Bang prior to any consciousnesses, it's not that the appearance of consciousness somehow changed the universe at later times, it's that you have to mentally insert hypothetical consciousnesses into the early Big Bang to even generate a language about what happened there. A "happening" is not an independent thing-- it is always a relationship to us. That's just the nature of intelligence.

 

[Maui]

This thread has been a very good read indeed. Consciousness just sits too close to souls, that seems to be the reason why 'çonsciousness' is often frowned upon, mocked or derided(or its existence is rejected) by neuroscientists, biologists and physicists(as if their unconscious, mechanistic framework were consistent with the observed evidence). But it might just be too early to talk about these issues in scientific terms on a science forum; that is until we get a firmer footing(congrats to the mods for allowing a bit of reasonable speculation to take place in the philosophy sub-forum).

 

[Evo]

Wow, this thread slipped through the cracks, it does not meet minimum criteria for posting.

Aha, this was moved here in error. Closed.