Quantum physics and consciousness: an enigma

These days a lot of people try to marry their weird spiritual or mystical beliefs with quantum physics, one of the best examples being the pseudo-science expressed in the movie What the bleep do we know? (see here and here for some critiques)

I've done considerable reading in the new physics and quantum theory, much of it when I was researching my first book, "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder: Echoes of Ultimate Reality in the New Physics."

However, I'll admit that my book can be criticized on the same grounds I didn't like What the bleep do we know? It was published in 1995, when I was still a true believer in an Eastern form of meditational, mystical religion.

I've maintained an interest in quantum physics and no longer am attracted to discussions of this subject that aren't founded in solid science. Recently I've read two books that explore the meaning of quantum theory, "Quantum Enigma" and "Biocentrism."

In this post I'll highlight what I found most interesting in "Quantum Enigma." It's on more solid scientific ground that "Biocentrism," which goes considerably farther out on a theoretical limb in its discussion of how consciousness not only reveals reality, but creates it.

The authors of "Quantum Enigma," Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner are physicists at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Their book was published by Oxford University Press. So they've got some solid credentials. Here's an excerpt from the back cover:

In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it.

Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all of this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, with an emphasis on what is and what is not speculation. Quantum Enigma 's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed.

Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial. Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum physics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing.

Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves.

"Quantum Enigma" is a wonderfully clear explanation of how consciousness intersects with quantum physics. The authors teach an undergraduate course on this subject to liberal arts majors, so they're skilled in presenting complex science in a simple way.

Often they bring quantum theory out of the realm of the very small -- where it is usually applied -- by providing examples of how things would work in the everyday world if they acted like quantum "objects."

Those quotation marks are necessary, because in quantum theory an atom, subatomic particle, or whatever doesn't exist until it is observed. Until then, a wavefunction is all there is. And nobody knows whether a wavefunction is really real, or just an abstract bit of mathematics.

We've been using the idea all along that the waviness in a region (technically, the absolute square of the wavefunction) is the probability that the object will be found in that region.

...Probability in quantum mechanics implies something far more profound than randomness.

Classical probability in the shell game, say, is the subjective probability (for you) of where the pea is. But there is also a real pea under one shell or the other. Quantum probability is not the probability of where the atom is.

It's the objective probability of where you (or anyone) will find it. The atom wasn't in that box until it was observed to be there.

Quantum theory has no atom in addition to the wavefunction of the atom. Since the atom's wavefunction occupies both boxes, the atom itself is simultaneously in both boxes until its observation in a single box causes it to be wholly in the box.

This is amazing. Rosenblum and Kuttner say it's akin to visitors entering a strange village where large objects obey the rules of quantum theory. They're shown two huts, with a man and a woman, holding hands, standing between the huts.

Then a hood is put over the head of a visitor. When the hood is removed she's told to ask, "In which hut is the couple, and which hut is empty?" Every time she does this, a door to one of the huts is opened and there the couple is, arm in arm.

Not surprising.

Nor is her experience when the experiment is repeated with her being told to ask, "In which hut is the man and in which hut is the woman?" Every time she does this, the doors to both huts are opened and the man is in one hut, with the woman in the other.

But now we come to the quantum enigma. The visitor is told that she will experience the final version of the experiments that is the crucial one. She puts on the hood, then is told to remove it and ask her question.

Visitor: "Which question should I ask?"
Villager: "Ah, my friend, you are now experienced with both questions. You may ask either of them. You may choose either experiment."

Here the weirdness kicks in.

If she asks in which hut is the couple, a man and woman are found to be in one or the other of the huts. If she asks in which hut is the man, and in which hut is the woman, the man and woman are found to be in separate huts.

The visitor is perplexed. She assumes that the man and woman had to be either together or separated immediately before she asked her question. However, the villager replies:

I see what disturbs you. In spite of your training as a physicist, and your experience with quantum mechanics in the laboratory, you are still imbued with the notion that a physical reality exists independent of your conscious observation of it. Apparently physicists find it hard to fully comprehend the great truth they have so recently gleaned.

Indeed, there seems to be little doubt that consciousness somehow is involved with quantum phenomena changing from a potential to an actual state of being. There are ways around this conclusion, but they strike me as unsatisfactory.

One is the many worlds hypothesis in which all quantum possibilities are actualized, so in one world the couple is together in a hut, while in another world they are in separate huts. This would mean that anything that could happen does happen, but we're only aware of one tiny twig of the astoundingly vast branching worlds.

Another possibility is that free will is an illusion, so the visitor necessarily asked the question associated with the "destiny" of the couple being either together or apart. This is more plausible to me than the many worlds hypothesis, but still seemingly highly unlikely.

Pleasingly, the book's authors leave the enigma of quantum theory and consciousness as it is: a mystery. Here are their parting thoughts in the final chapter:

We have presented the quantum enigma that arises from the brute facts displayed in undisputed quantum experiments. We have not presumed to resolve the quantum enigma. The questions the enigma raises are more profound than any answers we could seriously propose.

The quantum theory works perfectly: no prediction of the theory has ever been shown in error. It is the theory basic to all physics, and thus to all science. One-third of our economy depends on products developed with it. For all practical purposes, we can be completely satisfied with it. But if you take quantum theory seriously beyond practical purposes, it has baffling implications.

Quantum theory tells us that physics' encounter with consciousness, as is demonstrated for the small, applies, in principle, to everything. And that "everything" can include the entire universe. Copernicus dethroned humanity from the cosmic center. Does quantum theory suggest that, in some mysterious way, we are a cosmic center?

The encounter of physics with consciousness has troubled physicists since the inception of the theory eight decades ago. Many, no doubt most, physicists dismiss the creation of reality by observation as having little significance beyond the limited domain of the physics of microscopic entities. Others argue that Nature is telling us something, and we should listen. Our own feelings accord with Schrodinger's:

The urge to find a way out of this impasse ought not to be dampened by the fear of incurring the wise rationalists' mockery.

When experts disagree, you may choose your expert. Since the quantum enigma arises in the simplest quantum experiment, its essence can be fully comprehended with little technical background. Non-experts can therefore come to their own conclusions. We hope yours, like ours, are tentative.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    --Shakespeare, Hamlet

Comments

[Steven]

The problem with arguments like those in QE is:

1) CONSCIOUSNESS (whatever that is) is not observing the quantum phenomena, a carefully designed set of experimental devices are. The "observer" is not a human being.

2) All of these arguments imply that "consciousness" (again, something that hasn't been defined), is somehow independent of all quantum phenomena, that it stands on its own and is an untouchable objective event. Ironically, since those positing this argument have no trouble with the notion of self-reflexive awareness, they should be arguing that our very own consciousness doesn't exist until we look at it or for it (which, clearly, puts us in a bit of a loop)

3) The wave function is PURELY mathematical. It's a description of what we're able to observe given the tools (both mathematical and mechanical) at our disposal. Nobody has ever seen a wave function, nor have they seen it collapse. They've seen events consistent with the mathematics of a collapsing wave function... when using devices that are also consistent with the theory. None of that means the math is accurately describing reality. If, for example, the LHC reveals new information about the sub-atomic world, we may need an entirely new type of math, where wave functions are no more relevant than Netwonian equations.

4) The other implication is that the entire universe NEVER existed until the first human being with self-reflexive awareness came into being (and it's impossible to pick the date on which that happened). The "until we look for it, it's not there" notion is absurd. Let's run the same thought experiments that they use, above, but add another observer -- if YOU pick Hut #2 and I pick Hut #1 at the exact same time, and then both doors open at the exact same time, what happens? What if we add a third person who hasn't picked yet? (this highlights that it's the experimental design we're watching, not "reality")

Yes, the quantum world is weird and confusing and next-to impossible to understand with linear thinking... according to the models and the brains we have now.

At least QE doesn't seem to be (at least not from your review) straying into the realm of What The Bleep... and implying that quantum phenomena happen at non-quantum scales, that "you" REALLY exist in all places at all times, for example.

[Brian Hines]

Steven, soon I'll write a post about "Biocentrism," which, as I said, goes much further than "Quantum Enigma" in directions you properly are skeptical about.

Such as consciousness bringing the universe into existence. I've been trying to wrap my admittedly limited mind about this notion, but can't get it to work.

If there was no universe before the first conscious entity observed it, how did that being come into existence? And one would have to assume that only a human could bring the universe known to humans into existence. But a monkey could bring a monkey universe into existence, I assume.

Regarding the simultaneous picking of hut doors, the Quantum Enigma authors make clear that quantum theory deals with objective, not subjective, probabilities. Meaning, once the wavefunction collapses, it collapses for everybody -- not just the observer.

Maybe quantum objects are so sensitive, there always is a minute difference in time between when two conscious beings observe the same wavefunction. First observation gets to collapse it.

[Nietzsche]

My opinion is that the everyday world is created from the inside out. This means that we acquire some kind of sensory input ( it is not even input but it is an undiscribable something) and we construct a reality from it. The way this reality is constructed has to do with evolution. The human that constructed a reality seeing all the differences and maybe the quantum reality had a disadvantage over the one that constructed it with all similarities and simple causality. I mean it is necessary to recognize a rabbit in the wood and not focus on the millions of differences between rabbits. If however more accurate investigation shows that strictly the laws with which we construct reality are approximations than that is of no importance to survival except when you build an atom bomb :)
To go even further we perceive reality as working in on us, subject versus object light hitting our eyes etc. Schopenhauer thought this was the first intuitive way the causality is introduced in our reality construct. He thought that the world on its own is a place of free will in everything. He said: If I could ask the stone why he is falling the stone would say out of his free will.

But I believe we don't have to look this distant (quantum physics) for an example of mathematics versus our perceived reality. Look at continuity that was introduced with Leibniz. The Zenos paradox goes that we will never be able to move from a to b at all because there are infinity points between a and b. I conclude from this that the moments that we think that are in between a and b are creation of the mind. In reality there is continuous movement but it is easier to think of continuity made up out of moments while on close observation this is impossible. The same goes for causality, on close observation it leads to the question what was the first cause that is unanswerable. So much of the concepts and laws that make up our reality are our own constructions.
That we don't perceive the complementary nature of time and space is another one. When I want to be at an exact time somewhere than the place where I will be (lets say a door) is getting more and more insecure ;)
Our mind is a tool to life in reality, not to understand the true nature of the infinite everlasting life.

[George]

How about this implication:

Does quantum indeteterminancy mean there is no free will?

[Jonathan Elliot]

Thanks Brian, for a post on a subject I've been reading and discussing for a little while of late.

I find myself being tossed this way and that by interpretations of what quantum physics "means".

Stephen Hawking seems to have moved from a belief in a Mind behind things in "A Brief History of Time" to a lack of belief.

I'm sure you're aware of Victor Stenger's firm position that quantum stuff does NOT imply anything about consciousness affecting the world, eg http://www.csicop.org/si/show/quantum_quackery/

I like the final quote - when experts disagree you may choose your experts. Still, I'd really like some agreement here, oh great arcons-of-science ;)

Jonathan from Spritzophrenia

[George]

I am not sure we create reality so much as reality has created us with a unique perception of reality.

Also the ability to affect reality itself by perceiving it appears to be confined to the microlevel in which our instruments of measurement affect what is being perceived.

[Karl Coryat]

These ideas have fascinated me for years. I agree with the commenters who have a problem with any loosy-goosy use of the word "consciousness." People assume that consciousness means human consciousness, but perhaps we need to be a bit more humble and consider that every living organism exhibits some degree of "consciousness" -- response to the environment as well as response to oneself. What I would like to see are quantum experiments testing the perception/response of lower animals...I think it could be shown that they are just as capable of initiating quantum "collapse" as a human experimenter. To commenter Steven, who added the variation of the "huts" thought experiment, you've just described an exact parallel to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) thought experiment and its associated paradox. The modern solution (from a relational point of view) is that there still needs to be a classical information channel between the two observers, in which they interact to compare results, for any meaningful conclusions to be drawn. Before that interaction takes place, they are entangled with the systems they observed.

[wtf]

that book would be pretty impressive if it had been written 80+ years ago.

i have known kuttner in person and never seen him actually contribute much that was useful. furthermore he should not be writing a book on anything remotely relating to consciousness since he incessantly complains about how physics is totally different and separate from biology.

he is also the absolute last who should be teaching physics. i could get colorful, but suffice to say he is the diametric opposite of richard feynman...

anything at all intriguing in the book is more than likely rosenblum's doing, but i won't comment on rosenblum since i've never really met the man

[mishmash]

Giving consciousness a special role in QM is absurd. What is the brain? Matter arranged in a certain way, still governed by the known laws of the Universe. What part of the brain (consciousness) does the wave collapsing? Every part of it.

Because *everything* is an observer in the Universe. An atom, a rock, plant, chair... Doesn't matter if it's conscious or not.

Though by your reasoning maybe everything IS conscious, because everything IS an observer. From the humble rock all the way to the most advanced being in the Universe, consciousness is everything, as everything is an observer. We're nothing special in this regard.