Quantum Theory of the Human Person

1
Quantum Theory of the Human Person

• 1. The most important twenty-first-century
  development in science will be about the nature
  of human beings.
• 2. The basic unsolved question there is the
  nature of the causal relationship of mind to
  brain.
• 3. Von Neumanns Process I and II, applied to
  the human person, constitute genuine causal
  top-down and bottom-up mind-brain connections.
• 4. Process I involves Free Choice.
• 5. These Free Choices Can Influence Behavior.

2
The Most Important Question

• Human Beings Are More Important To Human Beings
  Than Quarks Or Big Bangs.
• Physical and Mental Health Funding Is Big and
  Growing (16 vs 2.8 of GNP).
• The Mind-Brain Question is of Towering
  Importance in Neuroscience and in
  Psychology/Psychiatry.
• Its Legal/Cultural/Institutional/Moral
  Ramifications Control Human Destiny.

3
Mind and Brain in Neuroscience

• At the start of the new millennium, it is
  apparent that one question towers above all
  others in the life sciences How does the set of
  processes we call mind emerge from the activity
  of the organ we call brain? Antonio Damasio
• The overwhelming question in neurobiology today
  is the relationship between the mind and the
  brain.
• Francis Crick.

4
Legal, Cultural, Institutional, Moral

• Australian Supreme Court Justice David Hodgsons
  book The Mind Matters describes the growing
  effects upon Law of the concepts of classical
  physics. (Recall the infamous Twinkie Defense
  of Dan White for the murders of SF Mayor Moscone
  and Supervisor Harvey Milk.)
• The thesis that Genes Environment determine
  behavior is not backed up by the evidence. (Books
  by S. Pinker and by J. Schwartz and S. Begley)

5
The Problem of Causation

• Classical physics reduces us to robots.
• Intuition insists that mental effort matters.
• This conflict is the basis of much philosophical
  debate Materialism vs Idealism vs Pragmatism.
• The issue colors all aspects of our lives.
• The basic question is the nature of causal
  connection between mind and brain.
• Bottom up verses Top Down causation.

6
Von Neumanns Process I

• Process II Generates a Continuum of Overlapping
  Possibilities.
• Environmental Decoherence Does Not Resolve The
  Problem!
• The Experimenter Chooses A Particular Action From
  A Continuum Of Possibilities!
• S ? S PSP (I-P)S(I-P)
• Discrete Possibilities Yes or No
• Geiger Counter Clicks or Doesnt Click

7
Process I Free Choice

• "The freedom of experimentation, presupposed in
  classical physics, is of course retained and
  corresponds to the free choice of experimental
  arrangement for which the mathematical structure
  of the quantum mechanical formalism offers the
  appropriate latitude N. Bohr

8
The Process I Free Choice

• In Copenhagen QT the experimenter stands outside
  the quantum system.
• Thus the Experimenters Choice is not determined
  by any known law.
• Process I is essential to von N QT.
• Von Neumann places the Process I choice in the
  Abstract Ego.
• No known law determines the Experimenters Free
  Choice!

9
Effort and Feedback

• The experimenter exerts an effort that he expects
  will produce a direct experiential feedback, and
  perhaps a response.
• A human being exerts an effort that he expects
  will produce the feeling and sight of moving his
  finger towards the stove, and perhaps the feel of
  the hot stove.
• Infants, children, and adults learn by trial and
  error what sort of feeling of effort will
  produce what sort of feedbacks, and possible
  feedbacks

10
Mind_Brain Interaction

• There is evidently a causal connection between
  feeling of effort and experiential feedback.
• Non-Interactive Parallelism? (Synchronized
  clocks Geulincx, Occasionalism)
• Monism? (Mind is Matter is Mind!) But how are
  feelings connected to geometry?
• Interactive Dualism! (Science has two kinds of
  descriptions. Von Neumanns Process I dynamically
  connects them.)

11
Quantum Psycho-Physical Theory

• Each course of action conceivable-to-the-agent is
  represented in QT by a P that specifies an
  associated pattern of brain activity.
• Effortful attention on the action represented by
  P causes rapid repetition of the Process I
  specified by P.
• William Jamess ideo-motor theory
• Effortful attention on an intended action
  normally initiates the brain activity that
  produces the expected action.

12
The Quantum Zeno Effect

• Suppose S describes slowly changing degrees of
  freedom of the brain.
• Suppose a sequence of freely chosen Process I
  events consist of a rapid repetition of events
  with the same P.
• Then S is trapped in the subspace of states of
  the form PXP if the original state has this form
  transitions to the other possibility (I-P)Y(I-P)
  are suppressed
• (I-P)exp-iHt(PXP)expiHt(I-P)O(t squared)

13
Willful Effort Influences Action

• The rapid repetition of Process I with the same
  P (or slowly changing P) holds the state in the
  form PXP!
• The essential achievement of the will, in short,
  when it is most voluntary, is to attend to a
  difficult object and hold it fast before the
  mind. Wm. James.
• Everywhere, then, the function of effort is the
  same the keep affirming and adopting the thought
  which, if left to itself would slip away. Wm.
  James.

14
Effort and Top-Down Causation

• Within classical physics the efficacy of effort
  is an illusion the feeling of effort
  accompanies the apparent effect, but the causal
  structure is completely explained, in principle,
  in terms of geometric concepts with no rational
  or logical link to feelings of effort.
• Within quantum theory the free choices by the
  agent can produce a top-down causal effect on the
  brain.

15
Conclusions

• Von Neumann QT brings physics in line with our
  intuition that our thoughts can influence our
  actions.
• We are not the robots that classical physics
  proclaimed us to be.
• The philosophically corrosive conclusion of CP is
  negated.
• This is just the beginning! (A paradigm shift.)