From Nobelist Eugene Wigner (1902–1995):
“The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists. – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177.
and
“…and one can well imagine a master, even a great master, of mechanics to say: “Light may exist but I do not need it in order to explain the phenomena in which I am interested.” The present biologist uses the same words about mind and consciousness; he uses them as an expression of his disbelief in these concepts.” p. 177.
See also: How Did Mathematics Come to be Woven Into the Fabric of Reality?
and
What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness
I just finished reading “What Is Real: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Mechanics”, a history of various interpretations of quantum mechanics, including questions of exactly what is real, what is the role of measurement, and how, specifically, has the Copenhagen interpretation fared against other interpretations in light of further experiments in QM.
In the summary, Becker wrote this:
Excerpt From: Adam Becker. “What Is Real?.” iBooks.
So Wigner’s views are not in the mainstream, I think. Anyone interested in the issue might enjoy reading Becker’s book to understand more about why he says what he does.
By the way, the link titled Remarks doesn’t work.
Actually, contrary to what Becker and jdk believe, Wigner’s insights into the foundations of quantum mechanics are holding up quite well:
As to Wigner’s point about the primacy of consciousness and Adam Becker’s question as to “What Is Real?
If consciousness is not ‘real’ then nothing else can be ‘real’.
And contrary to what jdk, via Becker, would like to imply, Wigner is in very good company:
Even Steven Weinberg himself, an atheist, reluctantly admitted that the ‘instrumentalist approach’ is very much a viable option in quantum mechanics:
And Anton Zeilinger, a leading experimentalist in Quantum Mechanics, stated this:
Thus, the reports of the death Wigner’s ideas, like Twain, have been greatly exaggerated
And it is not as if there is a shortage of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that overwhelmingly supports the Christian’s claim that the Mind of God precedes material reality. The following video goes over five lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics which strongly indicate that the infinite Mind of God must precede material reality:
But Wigner’s principle argument was not about experimental science. His principle argument was about the primacy of consciousness:
And in that regards Wigner is more than correct, Atheistic Materialism, (i.e. the denial of the primacy of our own consciousness and the denial of the Mind of God as being primary), simply collapses into complete epistemological failure, i.e. complete insanity!
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Of related interest to this is the falsification, by advances in quantum mechanics, of Einstein’s a-priori materialistic beliefs about experimental science:, i.e. the falsification of Einstein’s methodological naturalism.
Anyone who would like to have a perhaps more diverse view might like Becker’s book.
If it is all the same with you jdk, I think I will take Zeilinger’s word, who is a leading experimentalist in quantum mechanics with many breakthroughs under his belt, over Becker’s word, who is a ‘science writer’ with a PhD. who has no breakthroughs under his belt.
Hmmm. I looked at the video, and Zeilinger mentions that he is reminded of John 1:1, and that the idea is present in other religions. He certainly doesn’t imply that he is offering that as a conclusion.
So I’ve been googling Zeilinger, and find nothing about him and his religious beliefs. There is an essay in a book by Polkinghorne (The Trinity and an Entangled World) called “Quantum Physics: Ontology and Epistemology” that looks interesting (this is perhaps the key issue), but I can’t find it online and I’m not going to buy the book.
But given ba’s tendency to pick the quotes that support his position without, perhaps, a proper balance of other views, it would be interesting to see what Zeilinger’s perspective on religion and religious connections with QM is. As I said, in the few articles I read, there was nothing there.
Hey Denise, could you fix the link in the OP, please?
@jdk,
Curious about this line “(minus Wigner’s consciousness-based proposal, which has been dismissed as needlessly speculative and vague, and in danger of collapsing into solipsism”
Does Becker say who has dismissed iWigner’s proposal; are there any sources for his conclusion?
Entire quote from Zeilinger:
Elsewhere Zeilinger repeated his personal opinion about John 1:1
And like Wigner, Zeilinger finds himself in very good company in his claim about information:
Of related interest to this, Richard Feynman, in his role in developing Quantum-Electrodynamics, which is a mathematical theory in which special relativity and quantum mechanics are unified,
,, Richard Feynman was only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics in quantum electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” by a technique called Renormalization
In the following video, Richard Feynman rightly expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug.” in Quantum-Electrodynamics:
I don’t know about Richard Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
The reason why I find it rather comforting is because of John 1:1, which says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” ‘The Word’ in John 1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic.
So that it would take an infinite amount of logic to know what tiny bit of spacetime is going to do is pretty much exactly what one should expect to see under Christian presuppositions.
In fact, as a Christian Theist, I find both the double slit and quantum electrodynamics to be extremely comforting for Christian concerns.
In the double slit experiment we found that while a photon and/or electron is traveling in the double slit experiment it is mathematically required to be defined as being in an infinite dimensional space.,,,
,,,And we also found that the photon is mathematically required to be described by an infinite amount of information,,,
Now, saying something is in an infinite dimensional state to me, as a Christian Theist, sounds very much like the theistic attribute of omnipresence. And then saying something takes an infinite amount of information to describe sounds very much like the Theistic attribute of Omniscience to me.
And then we also saw that when Quantum Mechanics and special relativity were unified in quantum-electrodynamics that it still took an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do,,,
Now all this is pretty much exactly what we would expect to see under Christian presuppositions. But, on the other hand, under Atheistic materialism and/or naturalism, and the presuppositions therein, there simply is no rational explanation for why we should find these things to be as they are.
Moreover, the basics of quantum wave collapse dovetail perfectly into some of the oldest philosophical arguments that were made by Aristotle and Aquinas for the existence of God, and even offers empirical confirmation for those ancient philosophical arguments. Michael Egnor states that ‘Aristotle 2,300 years ago described the basics of collapse of the quantum waveform (reduction of potency to act),,,’
Here is a technical explanation of Aquinas’ First way argument for God where you can, at your leisure, see just how well the argument dovetails into what we are seeing in quantum mechanics
Moreover, besides being foundational to physical reality, information is also found to be ‘infused’ into biological life.
Moreover, Although the purported evidence for human evolution is far more illusory than most people realize, it is interesting to note exactly where leading Darwinists themselves honestly admit that they have no real clue how a particular trait in humans could have possibly evolved.
Best Selling author Tom Wolfe was so taken aback by this honest confession by leading Darwinists that he wrote a book on the subject. Wolfe provided a précis of his argument:
In other words, although humans are fairly defenseless creatures in the wild compared to other creatures, such as lions, bears, and sharks, etc.., nonetheless, humans have, completely contrary to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, managed to become masters of the planet, not by brute force, but simply by our unique ability to communicate information and, more specifically, infuse information into material substrates in order to create, i.e. intelligently design, objects that are extremely useful for our defense, shelter, in procuring food, furtherance of our knowledge, and also for our pleasure.
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’ than finding both the universe, and life itself, are both ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and, moreover, have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our unique ability infuse information into material substrates.
Perhaps a more convincing evidence that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, defeated death on a cross, and then rose from the dead to prove that He was indeed God.
But who has ever heard of such as that?
Verse and video:
to Belfast at 7: the issue of measurement is a main theme of Becker’s book, and various responses and alternative views in respect to Wigner are covered. The quote I offered was in the last chapter where Becker was summarizing the state of affairs.
I’d be loath to say anything too definitive without going back and researching the book, which I’m not inclined to do: One reading of such a complex history of people and ideas isn’t enough for me to summarize Wigner’s contribution.
However the book has a large bibliography and 100 pages of footnotes, FWIW, so it is a well-researched work.
However, I did a search for solipsism (I read electronic versions, which is very handy), and here are some of quotes I found searching for “solipsism”.from various places in the book.
to ba: what a hodge-podge of copy-and-pastes from your storehouse of previously published material.
The issue of information being central to the issue of interpreting the meaning of QM, is not, in my mind, controversial.
The very narrow issue that I brought up is that I’m curious as to whether Zeilinger has a religious component to his view of QM, or whether his couple of references to John 1:1 is any different than the many people who have pointed to similarities of QM with Eastern mysticism, as of historical interest but not relevant to their personal views.
as to:
And yet, it is precisely that finding that is devastating to Atheistic materialism and very supportive of Christian Theism. Go figure. Oh well controversial is in the eye of the beholder! 🙂
as to:
,,,funny, I can only find Zeilinger quoting John 1:1. Perhaps you can find Zeilinger quoting an Eastern Mysticism text so as to solidify your speculation that Zeilinger might hold on to your ill defined Eastern religion.
Moreover, I have noted many times before that you will waffle between defending Atheistic Materialism and then retreat to some ill defined notion of Eastern Mysticism when cornered on one of the many self-defeating absurdities within atheistic materialism.
Can you tell me, do you hold consciousness to be co-terminus with material particles or do you hold consciousness to be deeper than that? Be precise in your definition of your presuppositions and the relations inherent therein so that I will know exactly what evidence I need to present in order to more precisely refute your position.
Moreover, what I find interesting in your ill defined retreat from atheistic materialism to Eastern Mysticism is that Stuart Hameroff, who also holds to Eastern Mysticism, finds his beliefs to be incompatible with atheistic materialism.
In fact, he was treated as a pariah at an atheist convention
In fact, Hameroff even believes in a soul:
So, perhaps you can explain exactly why you are so friendly towards atheistic materialists, whereas Hameroff, who also holds to Eastern Mysticism, is treated as a pariah. What is the exact difference in you guy’s Eastern presuppositions that results in such a different outcome?
As to the Measurement problem and the supposed problem of “solipsism”, this following video goes over that issue in a fairly easy to understand manner.
We’re not discussing my personal metaphysical views, such as they are: we discussing interpretations of QM.
I didn’t say Zeilinger quoted Eastern mystics: I said many people do. Read carefully what you quoted.
Also, I don’t think information as a component of QM is devastating to materialism. QM is about the physical world. Just as relativity forced us to expand our understanding of time and space, QM has forced us to think about what is real at the most basic level of the material world. The fact that our old understanding of material particles moving though time and space at specific locations and speed, etc, has been shown to be wrong just means that we’ve had to change our understandings.
re 13: I watched about 1/3 of that video. Those issues are covered in the book I read. As with most of the rest of QM, there is not a satisfactory, consensus view of what the measurement problem is and how it is resolved.
The idea that consciousness is a necessary non-material factor in producing the world we observe is one of the interpretations offered, but above at 10 I briefly pointed to some problems with this view.
as to:
Yes we are since you are claiming that your Eastern Mystic view is equal to the claim made in John 1:1.
Read carefully what you said:
It is on you, since you made the claim, to show how Eastern Mysticism leads to a “Information Theoretic” view of reality that is specifically postulated in John 1:1.
as to:
You are, as usual, completely wrong in your denial.
It is only by bending and contorting materialism out of it’s original shape, (by such a severe degree that it no longer even resembles materialism as it was originally conceived for thousands of years), that you are able, with severe distortion, able to hold on to a “so called” materialistic view of reality.
I can put lipstick on a pig and call the pig a beauty queen, but that certainly will not ever make the pig a beauty queen! 🙂
i.e. I hold that changing basic definitions of materialism in order to avoid falsification of materialism is intellectually dishonest in a severe degree!
Of note: The entire history of Quantum Mechanics can be seen as the long slow, tortured, death of materialism by experimental science.
One final note: Richard Conn Henry states “if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the “illusion” of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism”,,,
BA77,
What you do in your spare time is none of our business. As long as the pig is consensual. 🙂
This thread is typical for this kind of (endless) discussions.
My personal view on this is, while such citations as Wigner’s are interesting, it is impossible to get rid of the major impasse between science and Revelation, i.e. that science posits a natural start of the world (and cannot do any better than that), whereas Revelation testifies to Creation (supernatural).
Science is powerful in what it is supposed to do, is limited (hence its inferential power) but should mind its own business and stay away from the problem of origins. It simply cannot explain how it all started because it is meant to deal with a world that already exists. It cannot expected to give the correct answer where it cannot provide one. Science is a (powerful but very limited) tool intended to be used as per user manual and not to be turned into religion. As simple as that…
So it does not matter much to me what science or scientists have to say on the subject, in general.
St Gregory of Thessaloniki: A word is always confronted with a word but who can refute reality? (paraphrase)
jdk: to ba: what a hodge-podge of copy-and-pastes from your storehouse of previously published material.
Tell me about it. I’ve pointed this out on this board about the contributor.
There have been a few instances where I thought that what I wrote on a previous thread was relevant to a new thread on here. But I at least link to it, which is the decent thing, instead of re-presenting it as if novel.
In short I don’t get it. But I’m not out to save the world.
Well groovamos, if you have a grievance against me you can always e-mail the administrator and present your case to him. If he agrees with you I will leave UD. If not, I will continue to cite the proper references to refute the specific (and oft repeated) false claims of atheists.
bornagain77 @ 2
To be conscious is to be conscious of something otherwise how can there be consciousness? When you are asleep, for example, unless you are dreaming, there is no awareness – no consciousness – of anything. On that basis, the thing of which are conscious must precede our awareness of it. That leaves consciousness as an “epi-phenomenon” of material reality.
What do you mean by “special position”?
Our consciousness is central to our perspective view of the Universe. It may be special to us but can it be said to be special in anything other than a subjective view?
No, that has yet to be determined. The argument against it, namely, that you cannot be conscious of that which does not yet exist, still stands
And Wigner’s argument is in danger of collapsing into solipsism.
If all we can know is the content of our consciousness then how can we know there is anything beyond? How can we know that it is not just an illusion?
If the content of our consciousness is actually knowledge of an external world then it must already exist for us to have knowledge of it.
If we are conscious of things that do not exist beyond us we are back to illusion and solipsism. If we are actually just conscious of a pre-existing external reality then how can you argue for the primacy of the mind?
As for the Copenhagen Interpretation, it appears to be just that, one of several interpretations about which there is still vigorous debate. It isn’t clear which if any of them is the better. Maybe it’s none of them. Maybe there’s others that we just haven’t thought of yet.
Seversky states:
You assume that the material brain has the capacity to generate consciousness. You have no evidence for your assumption. (In fact this is known as the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, Chalmers). Stuart Hameroff, who is an anesthesiologist, and who is very much aware of the attributes of the ‘sleeping brain’, and Roger Penrose held that consciousness is entering the brain via quantum entanglement and/or superposition (Orch-OR model). Quantum Entanglement requires a non-local, beyond space and time, cause in order to explain its effect.
Hameroff and Penrose’s ORCH-OR model has now been experimentally conformed.
Bottom line, you have no evidence for your claim that the material brain can generate consciousness, whereas, on the other hand, there is now evidence for the Christian’s claim that consciousness must be coming into the brain from outside space-time.
Verse:
Seversky then asks:
Leggett’s inequality and Wheeler’s delayed choice experiments, has both now falsified ‘realism’. Realism is the view that material reality objectively exists apart from our subjective conscious perception of it.
Moreover, not only has Quantum Mechanics now falsified the Copernican principle, (i.e. the belief that there is no special position or status to humans in the universe), but General Relativity itself undermines the Copernican principle in that even individual people can be considered central in the universe in Einstein’s formulation of General Relativity.
Seversky then states:
Your argument is nonsensical. It is like you saying I cannot be aware of a car unless the car first exists.
The human mind created the car!
As to solipsism and Wigner.,,,
I certainly don’t think my mind is collapsing the infinite dimensional/infinite information wave function. But I certainly think the omnipresent/omniscience MIND of God is capable of collapsing the “infinite” wave function.
You keep repeating this following argument as if it had merit:
Your main flaw in your argument is your belief that material reality is the only reality there is.
Material reality is not the only reality there is. There is an eternal, ‘immaterial’, reality that exists above this one. In fact, both Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are built upon ‘higher dimensional’ mathematics:
Sev. finally appeals to “several interpretations about (quantum mechanics) which there is still vigorous debate”. And yet, as Weinberg himself noted, all these “several interpretations” boil down to just two interpretations. I find the ‘instrumentalist approach’ to be far and away the most logically coherent.
bornagain77 @ 22
Yes, the hard problem of consciousness is explaining what it is and how it arises from the physical brain and we don’t have such an explanation as yet. The evidence for consciousness arising from the brain lies in the strong correlation between the two, the observation that when the brain is destroyed the consciousness disappears permanently and the challenge of explaining why else would we commit such a large percentage of our physical resources to support such an organ unless it provided us with something of great value.
Is there anything beyond space and time and, if so, what? Couldn’t it also be the case that what we are observing at the quantum level are phenomena that are intruding into our four-dimensional space-time continuum from some higher dimension?
As far as I can make out, there is some experimental support for some of the ORCH-OR model but it is far from being confirmed with the certainty you are suggesting.
From the Wikipedia entry on Leggett Inequality:
On the other hand, realism in the philosophical sense, which is how we think of things at our macroscopic level is described as follows, again from the Wikipedia entry:
In other words, there are two versions of realism, one at the quantum level and another different one at the macroscopic level. The fact that the quantum version has been undermined by experiment does not mean that the macro version has. Or are you really claiming that you only exist if someone is actually looking at you?
Cars existed before you and I became aware of them.
Yes, inasmuch as human minds first developed carts and carriages pulled by animals. Human minds then developed primitive engines which were improved and made more compact to the point where other minds decided to try fitting them to carts to provide motive power instead of horses. Thus was born the horseless carriage which, over the decades was refined into the modern car. But there was no disembodied intelligence floating in a featureless void that suddenly said “Ford Mustang!” and the fully-fledged vehicle appeared out of nowhere.
Maybe, but how do you propose to demonstrate it except by the effects it has on observable material reality? If it produces no such effects then it is like alternative universes that are completely undetectable from this one, they may be there but so what? On the other hand, if it has observable effects then why should we not consider it as just a hitherto unknown aspect of material reality?
Belfast @ 7:
I haven’t read Becker’s book, but you get can some idea of current opinions from a couple of informal surveys of physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians attending recent conferences: a 2011 conference on “Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality” (“A Snapshot of Foundational Attitudes Toward Quantum Mechanics, by M. Schlosshauer, J. Kofler, and A. Zeilinger) and a 2013 conference “Quantum Theory Without Observers III” (“Yet Another Snapshot of Foundational Attitudes Toward Quantum Mechanics”, by T. Norsen and S. Nelson).
The attendees aren’t necessarily a representative sample (especially in the second case), and this is clear from some of the results. Most notably, in the 2011 conference, the most popular interpretation of QM (question #12) was the Copenhagen interpretation (chosen by 42% of attendees), followed by “Information-based/information-theoretical” (24%) and “Everett (many worlds and/or many minds)” (18%); nobody chose the De Broglie–Bohm interpretation as their favorite. Compare that with the 2013 conference, where De Broglie–Bohm was by far the most popular (with 63%) followed by “Objective collapse (e.g., GRW, Penrose)” (16%); in this survey, Copenhagen got only 4%.
But the questions that’re most relevant here are reasonably consistent, despite the very different groups of attendees. The first is question 10, “The observer”:
a. Is a complex (quantum) system: 39% in 2011, 54% in 2013
b. Should play no fundamental role whatsoever: 21% in 2011, 65% in 2013
c. Plays a fundamental role in the application of the formalism but plays no distinguished physical role: 55% in 2011, 24% in 2013
d. Plays a distinguished physical role (e.g., wave-function collapse by consciousness) (i.e. the Wigner view -GD): 6% in 2011, 1% in 2013
(Note: the numbers don’t add to 100% because multiple answers were allowed.) In the 2011 paper, the authors have a particularly relevant comment on this result:
(Note for ba77: note that Anton Zeilinger is one of the authors of that paragraph; I don’t think he agrees with you as much as you think he does.)
The other is question 14, “How much is the choice of interpretation a matter of personal philosophical prejudice?”:
a. A lot: 58% in 2011, 40% in 2013
b. A little: 27% in 2011, 34% in 2013
c. Not at all: 15% in 2011, 15% 2013
The significance here is that, contrary to Wigner’s statement that “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness”, we now have a wide variety of very different interpretations of QM which are consistent and predict the same empirical results. Thus, it’s not possible to justify preferring one interpretation over another on either logical or empirical grounds; instead, one’s personal preference is just that: a personal preference. Someone who thinks consciousness should have a distinguished role can pick an interpretation that gives it such a role, but there’s no other reason to do so.
Gordon Davisson states:
Actually, Anton Zeilinger agrees far more with the Christian position than he does with your Atheistic Materialism.
First off, as mention previously in this thread, Zeilinger holds to a “Information Theoretic” position on Quantum Mechanics and even mentions John 1:1 on at least a couple of occasions.
Secondly, Zeilinger has done work establishing the validity of free will in Quantum Mechanics:
Moreover, Zeilinger himself also solidified the inference to free will’s axiomatic position in Quantum Mechanics with this following experiment. In the following experiment, the claim that past material states determine future conscious choices (determinism) is directly falsified by the fact that present conscious choices are, in fact, effecting past material states:
In other words, if my conscious choices really are just merely the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in in the past (deterministic) how in blue blazes are my choices in how to set up an experiment instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past? This experiment is simply impossible for any coherent materialistic presupposition!
Also Gordon Davisson, many times you have championed yourself as some kind of expert on Thermodynamics and have opposed Granville Sewell’s work on ‘Open Systems’, here on UD, on numerous occasions.
As such, you might find the following experiments on the “Zeno Effect” particularly interesting.
The ‘Quantum Zeno Effect’ is, to put it simply, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.
The reason why I am very impressed with the Quantum Zeno effect as to establishing consciousness’s primacy in quantum mechanics is, for one thing, that Entropy is, by a wide margin, the most finely tuned of initial conditions of the Big Bang:
For another thing, it is interesting to note just how foundational entropy is in its explanatory power for actions within the space-time of the universe:
In fact, entropy is the primary reason why our physical, temporal, bodies grow old and die,,,
And yet, to repeat,,, “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.”
This is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should conscious observation put a freeze on entropic decay, unless consciousness was/is more foundational to reality than the 1 in 10^10^123 entropy is?
A few verses of related interest:
Also of note, Sir William Thomson certainly thought the second law of thermodynamics supported the Christian view of creation.
Sev, the time when promissory notes on forthcoming materialist explanations of the rational mind, responsible freedom, moral government and more were plausible is long past. The fact is, evolutionary materialism cannot credibly account for the alleged spontaneous account of a functional computational substrate, due to the FSCO/I, blind needle in the haystack challenge. Strictly, it should be a non-starter at that point. But, going on, it is patent that blindly mechanical and/or stochastic computation is simply not the same as rational, intentional, insightful, responsible, understanding-driven contemplation. The things are categorically distinct, computation being a non-rational process. The imagined, unexplained, Sci Fi fantasy of spontaneous emergence of conscious mind from computational substrate (which is ever so commonly seen) is little more than a belief in materialistic magic. It is high time for a fundamental re-think. KF
Seversky states:
What? Consciousness and the brain are two different things? Tell me it ain’t so 🙂
I thought that you held the immaterial mind TO BE the material brain,??? i.e. the mind and the brain are ONE thing in your view of consciousness are they not?
Moreover, the fact that the immaterial mind has pronounced effects on the material brain is experimentally well established (Brain Plasticity, Placebo effect, etc.. etc..).
Seversky then claims:
And in that claim, as has been pointed out to Seversky numerous times before, Seversky completely ignores the millions of Near Death Experiences that directly contradict his claim.
Seversky then claims
Actually Seversky you have it, as usual, completely backwards.
The preceding experiments are very unexpected to materialists since materialists hold that ‘mind’ is merely a ’emergent property’ of the physical processes of a material brain. But why should ‘thought’ which is presupposed to be result of, and subservient to, the material processes of the brain constrain the material brain to operate at such a constant and optimal metabolic rate whereas the rest of body fluctuates in its metabolic activity? The most parsimonious explanation for such a optimal constraint on the brain’s metabolic activity is that the material brain was designed, first and foremost, to house the mind and give the mind the most favorable metabolic environment at all times. Moreover the brain, in terms of its ‘almost unbelievable’ complexity, is shown to have more switches than all the computers on earth put together, and yet the brain consumes far less energy than a computer does, which strongly suggests to me, because of Landauer’s principle, that the information of the mind (memories) must be stored on a ‘spiritual’ level rather than on a material level.
Seversky then asks:
The first part of this following video touches on the relation between the “invisible and “immaterial”” higher dimension realm and how it relates to this temporal material realm that we are currently living in:
Seversky then challenges the experimental validity of Penrose and Hameoffs’s Orch-OR model. Yet the evidence from the entire field of “Quantum Biology” is profound and extensive and falsifies the entire reductive materialistic framework that undergirds Darwinian thought:
Seversky then tries to split hairs on the definition of ‘realism’. Funny that Seversky does not seem to realize that I never claimed that anything other than his ‘materialistic’ view of realism has been falsified. (in fact I could use Seversky’s own references against him if I so chose to make an argument in that line of reasoning)
As to Seversky’s complaint that the human mind did not create the car in an instant completely from scratch, I hardly consider that complaint worth a reply, but anyways, besides the “flash of insight’ argument from Turing .. I will also reference Ellis in response:
It is interesting to note that even though, as was shown in the preceding Godel-Turing video, Alan Turing believed humans were merely machines, much like the computers he had envisioned, yet Turing failed to realize that his entire idea for computers came to him suddenly, ‘in a vision’ as he put it, thus confirming, in fairly dramatic fashion, Godel’s contention that the humans mind had access to the ‘divine spark of intuition’
As to Sevesky’s last statement on demonstrating the physical efficacy of top down causation from the ‘immaterial’ realm of mind and information, I re-reference the George Ellis paper that I just cited in this post (i.e. read the ENTIRE Ellis paper in full Seversky!)
Thank you, Gordon Davisson, for the very informative post, and for providing some support for the quote about Wigner.
And thank you empirical evidence for preventing me from blindly following the supposed ‘consensus opinion’ in science blindly off the cliff as jdk appears more than willing to do.
Seversky @23
Of course, as we all know, correlation is not causation.
You are fundamentally mistaken. There cannot be such an observation, since each one of us has exclusive privileged access to one’s own consciousness.
That’s not much of a challenge … Our physical bodies make it possible to connect, observe and function in this physical world.
Origenes,
But causation does cause correlation.
It would be more accurate to say that there is no evidence that the consciousness survives the destruction of the brain.
As is the case for all other animals, many with senses much more acute than ours. But how do you explain the fact that humans have the highest encephalization quotient of all mammals?
AK, affirming the consequent: IF causation THEN correlation is not the same as the reverse. Kindly see my onward op. The denial of such evidence as there is that death and annihilation of existence are not equal, does not make the annihilationism true. Likewise, it is unwise to assume that brain size — absolute or relative — is a proof of anything beyond need for computing power, where computing is not the same type of thing as rational, insightful, responsible contemplation. KF
Kairosfocus,
I didn’t say that they were. But I see too many people use the “correlation does not mean causation” term as if it were evidence that there is not a causal link. Which is not the case.
When we see correlation, there is often either a direct causal relationship or an indirect one, sometimes circuitously indirect.
We do not know very much about consciousness, but we do know the following:
1) There is no evidence that it exists without a functioning brain.
2) Physical damage to the brain can result in cessation of consciousness and significant changes to level of consciousness.
3) We can use chemicals to cause the cessation of consciousness or changes in the level of consciousness.
Maybe consciousness exists independent of the brain. But if this is the case, is this a temporary existence? Are they eternal? And if eternal, how many are there? Is there a finite number? The concept of the non-physical mind asks more questions than it answers.
AK, causal sufficiency is required to substantiate the materialist claim. But that gets you to things that undermine credibility of mind, i.e. mind becomes GIGO driven fundamentally non-rational mechanical and/or stochastic computation. Precisely what conscious, insightful, meaning and understanding driven, morally governed contemplation is not. It is also self-referentially incoherent, implying grand delusions of rationality and morally governed responsible freedom; essentially computational entities are mechanical and/or stochastic, not insightful, responsible and free. That one may warp or affect consciousness by physical and chemical manipulation of the brain is not decisive as that is about interface, cf. the Smith model and related remarks on Q-influences. A crude but telling example is, smashing or dunking a functional cell phone — ceases functionality but it was never the cause of the signals or meanings it processed. See my OP https://uncommondescent.com/ethics/science-worldview-issues-and-society/sevs-iou-on-how-conscious-mind-will-be-explained-on-materialistic-premises/ KF
PS: We may infer more about mindedness, key abstracta and the like than one may at first imagine. For instance, what is essentially a configuration of detachable parts must be caused and is prone to destruction by disintegration. What is essentially a whole without composition by parts — essential simplicity — is not prone to such disintegration. For simple illustration distinct identity is framework for a world to exist, and implies twoness directly. This property did not begin, cannot cease and is enabling of the world of numbers and linked structures by necessary logical connexion. Those logical necessities constrain what sort of physical properties are possible . . . mathematics is inextricably entangled with being. And a lot more.
PPS: BTW, it is Wigner who marvelled on the power of Math in the sciences. Insightful logical reasoning on structure and quantity is not an empirical exercise but has enormous power to reveal connexions and predict observable results.
ba77 @ 25:
Did you notice the very next thing he said in the video after quoting John 1:1? He says “And I know that this is not the only tradition in the world which says something like that.”
Did you also notice this bit at around 10:57 in the video (while talking about a photon through/reflecting off a half-silvered mirror):
I think you’re also assuming the “information” in his view of QM is far more similar to yours than it actually is. You make essentially the same mistake about “free will”, “choice”, and “observation” — you assume that physicists use these words to mean the same thing you do, but they actually mean something quite different (and not particularly related to consciousness). The definitions of “information” they use have far more to do with Shannon than Dembski; their definitions of “free will” and “choice” generally don’t distinguish between conscious choice and simple randomness, and they don’t distinguish conscious observation vs measurement by an unconscious device (or even things even more different. Let me run through your examples to illustrate this.
Did you actually read what you quoted? They’re using the colors of photons from distant stars as sources of “free will”:
They’re using the random colors of photons instead of having a conscious person choose which measurement settings, because they consider the photons a better source of “free will” than a person would be. Special role in the universe for consciousness? Not if photons work as a drop-in (and higher-quality) replacement.
Also, at 27:33 in the video you linked, Zeilinger says:
In other words, he rejects the superderminism loophole in Bell’s theorem not because it can be properly ruled out, but because he doesn’t like it. (And for the record, I agree with him.) This supports what I said @ 24: that one’s personal preference in QM interpretations really is largely a personal preference.
Next, you said:
There are two problems here; first and most obviously, the actual experiment (again) doesn’t use conscious choice. The actual paper is available from arXiv here, and it explicitly says:
So again, simple randomness is apparently just as magic as consciousness. Except that it’s not actually magic either, since the appearance of future “choices” affecting past states is only an appearance, not a reality. Asher Peres, in the original paper where he proposed this experiment, makes this pretty clear (note: I’ve trimmed this heavily, and added my emphasis):
So according to Peres, the retroactively-created entangled state is only apparent, not actually real. The real situation is that the particles produced and measured by Alice and Bob are not entangled, they just appear to be when post-selected based on the final measurement made by Eve. Thus, there’s no real paradox, and no implication of real backward-in-time causality.
Ok, back to ba77 for the next topic, “observation”:
I don’t think I’ve ever claimed to be a proper expert on either QM or thermodynamics. I do claim to know enough about both areas of physics to be able to evaluate the relevant claims on their technical merits (and frankly, it doesn’t take a lot of expertise to spot the problems with Granville Sewell’s work). For instance, I do understand the physics behind the quantum Zeno effect, and can say with a great deal of certainty that it doesn’t have anything to do with consciousness. But you don’t need to take my word for it; the paper you cited clearly states that conscious measurement is not needed (again, my emphasis added):
So, the quantum Zeno effect doesn’t require a conscious observer, or even anything that might remotely qualify as measurement; an absorber suffices as a replacement.
For the quantum effects that actually do involve measurement, actual physics experiments generally use measuring devices of one sort or another, not conscious observers. They use simple randomness instead of conscious choice, and devices instead of conscious observers, and guess what? All the various quantum effects that’re sometimes claimed to depend on the specialness of conscious show up just fine without any conscious involvement at all!
BTW, I should probably make something clear here: QM is weird, and I’m not at all claiming that it’s not. What I’m saying is that it’s not weird in ways that would imply a special role for consciousness.
Ok, that’s enough for now; if I get a chance I’ll address the question of “information” (hint: again, not particularly related to consciousness) and maybe even entropy (although that’s pretty far off topic).
Gordon Davisson at 37 states:
And exactly how does this unspecified allusion to other traditions refute my claim that “Anton Zeilinger agrees far more with the Christian position than he does with your Atheistic Materialism”?
It seems readily apparent to me that you are far more interested in trying to cast doubt on Christianity than you are in truthfully acknowledging that Atheistic Materialism, as traditionally conceived for thousands of years, and which currently undergirds Darwinian thought, is completely incompatible with quantum mechanics.
Gordon then states:
I did notice that comment. First off, He is making a Theistic presupposition about God’s omniscience and is not making an Atheistic Materialism presupposition. In other words, it is absolutely no help for you.
Secondly, at the 37:00 minute mark, Anton Zeilinger also humorously reflected on just how deeply determinism has been undermined by quantum mechanics by saying such a deep lack of determinism may provide some of us a loop hole when they meet God on judgment day.
Personally, I feel that such a deep undermining of determinism by quantum mechanics, far from providing a ‘loop hole’ on judgment day as Dr. Zeilinger stated, actually restores free will to its rightful place in the grand scheme of things, thus making God’s final judgments on men’s souls all the more fully binding since man truly is a ‘free moral agent’ to the infinite extent possibly allowed.
Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. states it as such:
And exactly as would be expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Gordon then goes through a bunch more stuff about free will and how detector settings are chosen “randomly” by photons before ultimately rejecting ‘superdeterminism’.
That entire exercise by Gordon is too funny. Since Gordon rejects determinism and now also rejects ‘superdeterminism’, Gordon is left with no other option than free will. That WAS THE ENTIRE POINT of the experiment for crying out loud!
To go on, Gordon tries to get into the weeds on Peres, but Asher Peres also stated this:
Again, realism, i.e. atheistic materialism, is completely incompatible with this result. And again, Gordon seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that the entire materialistic foundation of his Darwinian worldview is collapsing.
As Wheeler stated:
Gordon then goes on to Thermodynamics and reiterates his claim against Granville Sewell. Thermodynamics is a far more devastating problem for Darwinists than Gordon seems willing to ever admit. Myself, I will choose empirical evidence over Gordon’s posturing ANY day!
As to the quantum zeno effect and Gordon’s attempt to find some type of materialistic loophole, that is exactly why I also listed the ‘interaction free measurement’ experiment.
Interaction free measurements are NOT friendly to Atheistic concerns.
Here is a simple example that is easy to understand:
All is all, the same profound mistake runs all though Gordon’s supposed rebuttal. He seeks to cast doubt on the Christian view of creation all the while forgetting that he, as an atheistic materialist, is left completely without any coherent foundation whatsoever in which to make the criticism.
i.e. remove the plank Gordon!
Since a lot of Gordon’s post involved him trying to refute Zeilinger’s “opinion’ on free will (and Theism in general), I think the following quote will help clarify what Zeilinger’s exact ‘opinion’ on free will is.
Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Needless to say, ‘Not just passive observers’ is very conducive to my Christian worldview.
Also of note, In Gordon’s denial of the reality of free will, he undermines his own claim that he is, by his own volition, forming a rationally coherent ‘opinion’.
As to ‘presume a perspective outside the physical order’, see, Lewis’s “the argument from reason’:
Also see Weinberg’s description of the ‘instrumentalist approach’: Steven Weinberg states in the following article, (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
And again, this ‘humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level’ and ‘ these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure’ position is very comforting to overall Christian presuppositions.
To reiterate, although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. states it as such:
And exactly as would be expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Verse;
ba77, you’ve completely failed to address the central point of my last message, so I’ll state it plainly here: The experiments you’ve cited as showing there’s something special about conscious choice & free will do not actually involve conscious choice, but rather simple randomness. The experiments you’ve cited as showing there’s something special about conscious observation do not actually involve conscious observation, but rather measurement by unconscious devices (or worse, simple absorption). Far from showing that there’s something special about consciousness, they actually show that, at least for these purposes, there is nothing special about consciousness, since it can be replaced by unconscious stand ins.
A few notes that might help you understand a little more clearly:
Here is a more detailed explanation of the closing of the freedom of choice loophole
Of related note to the preceding articles:
A few more notes
You’re just repeating your mistake, without addressing my point.
Actual article: https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05949. If you look at the diagram at the top of page 2, they used quantum random number generators (not conscious choice) to choose which measurements to make, and the results of the measurement were recorded rather than being directly observed by a conscious observer. No consciousness directly involved. As I said, the fact that these effects occur without the direct involvement of any conscious entities means they aren’t dependent on conscionsness, which pretty much pulls the rug out from under your whole argument.
As I said before, this proposal involves using the randomness of starlight as a source of “free will”/”choice” — not consciousness. Do you think starlight is conscious? If not, then this does not support your view.
I presume you mean 17:40? Anyway, he’s talking about the same thing as your last link, using starlight as a source of “free will”/”choice”.
I haven’t watched the video, but the arXiv paper says: “While the photons were in flight, the choice of measurement setting was made in each station by a random number generator (RNG) [25,26] situated there. The measurement was implemented by a fast electro-optical modulator (EOM) followed by a polar- izer and a transition-edge sensor (TES) single-photon detector [27]. The signal from the TES was amplified by a series of superconducting [28] and room-temperature amplifiers, digitized, and recorded locally on a hard drive.”
Again, no conscious choice or observation was directly involved.
Again, these are all talking about using starlight-based randomness, not conscious choice.
So? As I said before, I agree that we can reject superdeterminism.
Relevance? They’re examining causality in a situation that, as far as we know, doesn’t (and maybe cannot) exist.
The InspiringPhilosophy guy makes many of the same mistakes you do.
This sounds superficially relevant, doesn’t it? But as we’ve seen in your previous citations, physicists don’t really distinguish between a person choosing which measurement to make vs a random process making the choice. Also, if you actually bother to read the article, he’s basically griping about how he doesn’t really like either realist or instrumentalist interpretations of QM, and thinks we need a better theory to replace QM. And he says: “The goal in inventing a new theory is to make this happen not by giving measurement any special status in the laws of physics, but as part of what in the post-quantum theory would be the ordinary processes of physics.” In other words, he doesn’t think that either the choice of measurements to make, nor observation of their results, should have any special status.
The Kochen-Specker theorem, as usual, is generally tested using non-conscious choice of measurements and non-conscious observation of results. So when he says “We are not just passive observers”, he’s not specifically talking about conscious observers. The K-S results imply that unconscious measurement devices are also not just passive observers.
Barr’s argument is fundamentally silly. We don’t know what (if anything) causes an wavefunction to collapse. Barr infers that therefore, it must be consciousness that causes collapse! But there’s no basis for that inference, other than Barr having started with the assumption that consciousness is special.
Actually, collapse (if it’s even a real thing) could be caused by pretty much anything, as long as it doesn’t occur to the particles being studied, during the experiment. Take the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber theory as an example. It proposes that individual particles sometimes (but very very rarely) spontaneously collapse. This’ll almost never happen to any of the particles involved in an experiment during the experiment, but once you get a measuring device (consisting of millions of billions of billions of particles), it’s almost certain that at least one of them will collapse pretty quick, and when that happens it’ll (per the normal rules of QM) collapse the entire entangled superposition.
Does that sound silly to you? If so, it’s only because your pre-existing philosophical bias makes the idea of consciousness being special seem less silly than the idea of particles being special.
But it’s actually worse that that. If Burr is right, then all of those other experiments you cited — all those experiments that used non-conscious measurements and recording and results — didn’t actually test what they set out to do, because their measurements didn’t really happen! Well, not until much later, when (/if) a human looked at the results. Do you really want to make that claim?
The InspiringPhilosophy guy (and many of those he quotes) are making the same mistake as Barr; mistaking their philosophical prejudice for an implication of QM. And his discussion starting at 6:20 of what Henry Stapp calls the “Heisenberg choice” (what to measure) vs. the “Dirac choice” (what the result will be) is pretty much refuted by all those citations you gave earlier. He claims it takes an “observer” to choose what to measure, but as we saw earlier that can be made randomly.
Gotcha GD, everybody is mistaken except you and your fellow Atheists.
The precise point of the cosmic bell test was to close the setting independence loophole and establish that the physicist running the experiment has “complete free will” in choosing each detector’s setting.
Thus you are stuck with either accepting the reality of free will or with accepting ‘superdeterminism’. Both positions are self-defeaters for atheistic materialism.
If you do not like the results, argue with the scientists, (Zeilinger and Company), who closed the free will ‘loophole’.
Here is Anton Zielinger’s website where you can contact him personally and tell him exactly why you think he is wrong in his experimentally verified belief in free will.
ZEILINGER GROUP
EXPERIMENTAL QUANTUM FOUNDATIONS AND APPLICATIONS
https://www.iqoqi-vienna.at/research/zeilinger-group/
Do let me know how all that goes for you.
As to your beef with subjective consciousness in QM, see my post on kf’s thread on the falsification of ‘realism”
To try to dispel some of the confusion surrounding GD’s thinking.
GD is hung up on the fact that Random Number Generators and the randomness of starlight are being used as ‘stand ins’ for “free will”/”choice” in the experiments.
The use of “nearly perfect’ quantum random-number generators and of ‘random starlight’ in the experiments are for a very specific reason. The reason they did this was to establish that the detector setting is completely independent and is not predetermined in any way, shape, or form, by any other causal factors in the universe. They have shown that the precondition of the detector setting is, what may be termed, “infinitely random” in that, as far as experiment will allow, there are found to be no causal, i.e. deterministic, influences predetermining what the detector setting will be .
In other words, the fact that ‘nearly perfect’ randomness was used in the experiment was done precisely to refute the ‘classical’, deterministic, notion that the detector setting could somehow be predetermined.
To be perfectly clear, they did ‘philosophically’ assume that the physicist running the experiment does have free will in that they assumed the experimenter can choose whatever detector setting he likes beforehand.
But that was not the purpose of the experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to establish the fact of “complete setting independence” for the detector and not to establish ‘complete free will’ for the physicist running the experiment.
In other words, they assumed the common sense assumption that physicist themselves have free will.
And indeed the Physicist does not just randomly choose what detector settings to use beforehand and what aspects of reality to probe, but purposely chooses those settings and aspects in a experiment that will specifically answer the question he is asking about reality. And indeed even answer questions about the materialistic assumption of ‘realism’.
For example, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation” and “Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment.”
In other words, due to contextuality, the results we obtain in quantum mechanics crucially depend on how we chose our prior measurements. As Anton Zeilinger stated of the Kochen-Specker theorem “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
And if GD really wants to go down the path of denying that the scientists doing the experiments have free will, in being able to choose whatever detector settings they like, I remind readers that GD is logically cutting his own throat in that in his denial of his own free will he is forsaking any right to the claim that he is making a logically coherent argument in the first place:
To be blunt, GD’s denial of his own free will is insane!
And of particular interest to GD’s notion of ‘random starlight” is the experiment of ‘quantum entanglement in time’.
In regards to the experiment of ‘quantum entanglement in time’, in the following article Professor Crull states “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
That experiment would certainly seem to throw a big ole monkey wrench into GD’s entire ‘random starlight’ hypothesis.
One interesting final note to all this is the falsification of Einstein’s prior ‘classical’ notions about quantum mechanics and his own mind:
Verse:
Amazing verse, BA77. True indeed. In him, all things hold together.