The importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes
It is shown how environmental decoherence plays an essential and constructive role in a quantum mechanical theory of brain process that has significant explanatory power.
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arXiv subjects
Henry P. Stapp
Publications and source records attributed to Henry P. Stapp.
From quantum nonlocality to mind-brain interaction
Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules that describe connections between our observations. However, an examination of certain nonlocal features of quantum theory suggests that the perceived need for this renunciation was due to the uncritical importation from classical physics of a crippling metaphysical prejudice, and that rejection of that prejudice opens the way to a dynamical theory of the interaction between mind and brain that has significant explanatory power.
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Nonlocality, Counterfactual, and Consistent Histories
The paper develops a version of modal logic that stays completely within the framework provided by quantum principles, and then proves, within the framework of quantum thinking, and in particular without invoking "hidden variables", a Bell-type nonlocality result.
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From Einstein Nonlocality to Von Neumann Reality
Recent nonlocality results support a new picture of reality built on the ideas of John von Neumanm
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Decoherence, Quantum Zeno Effect, and the Efficacy of Mental Effort
Recent theoretical and experimental papers support the prevailing opinion that large warm systems will rapidly lose quantum coherence, and that classical properties will emerge. This rapid loss of coherence would naturally be expected to block any critical role for quantum theory in explaining the interaction between our conscious experiences and the physical activities of our brains. However, there is a quantum theory of mind in which the efficacy of mental effort is not affected by decoherence effects. In this theory the effects of mental action on brain activity is achieved by a Quantum Zeno Effect that is not weakened by decoherence. The theory is based on a relativistic version of von Neumann's quantum theory. It encompasses all the predictions of Copenhagen quantum theory, which include all the validated predictions of classical physical theory. In addition, it forges two-way dynamical links between the physical and experiential aspects of nature. The theory has significant explanatory power.
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Attention, Intention, and Will in Quantum Physics
The need for a self-observing quantum system to pose questions leads to a tripartite quantum process involving a Schroedinger process that is local deterministic, a Heisenberg process that poses the question, and a Dirac process that picks the answer. In the classical limit where Planck's constant is set to zero these three processes reduce to one single deterministic classical process: the fine structure wherein lies the effect of mind upon matter is obliterated.
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Quantum Ontologies and Mind-Matter Synthesis
Aspects of a quantum mechanical theory of a world containing efficacious mental aspects that are closely tied to brains, but that are not identical to brains.
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Comment on ``Possibility of quantum mechanics being nonlocal''
A recent proof, formulated in the symbolic language of modal logic, shows that a well-defined formulation of the possibility mentioned in the title is answered affirmatively. In the paper being commented upon several proposals were made about how to translate this symbolic proof into prose, and it was concluded, on the basis of those proposed translations, that either the proof was invalid or that an unwarranted reality assumption was made. However, those interpretations deviate in small but important ways from the precise logical path followed in the proof. It is explained here how by staying on this path one avoids the difficulties that those deviations engendered.
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Is quantum mechanics non-local?
A recent proof, couched in the symbolic language of modal logic, shows that a well-defined formulation of the question posed in the title is answered affirmatively. In a paper with the same title Unruh has tried in various ways to translate the symbolic proof into normal prose, and has claimed that the proof must fail in some way or another. A correct translation is given here, and it is explained why the difficulties encountered by Unruh do not actually arise.
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Comments on Unruh's Paper
Unruh has commented upon my recent proof that certain predictions of quantum theory are incompatible with the assertion that no influence of any kind acts backward in time in any Lorentz frame. Unruh fails to make a necessary distinction between statements that assert the existence of values, and statements that assert the existence merely of correlations between possible values. Consequently his argument fails to show that my proof involves a tacit or hidden reality assumption that is alien to quantum theory.
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Reply to Unruh
William Unruh has suggested (quant-ph/9710032) that a certain counterfactual statement in my recent nonlocality proof should be re-interpreted in a way that would block the proof. I give reason's why that statement should not be re-interpreted.
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Nonlocality and Bohr's Reply to EPR
David Mermin's recent paper with the same title as this one makes it clear that his claim to have found a gap in my reasoning rests on his claim that my argument violates a criterion for meaningfulness of counterfactual statements that I myself had set down. I set down no such requirement. But I am willing to accept it as a conservative sufficient condition. This already entails, within my proof, that nature must have a deep structure that extends beyond what actually occurs. It imposes, without appeal to the notion of determinism or hidden variables, constraints connecting, at the macroscopic level, what did occur to what would have occurred if certain quantum choices had gone differently. All the statements in the proof have natural meanings within the context of an examination of that deep structure.
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On quantum theories of the mind
Replies are given to arguments advanced in this journal that claim to show that it is to nonlinear classical mechanics rather than quantum mechanics that one must look for the physical underpinnings of consciousness.
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Mermin's Suggestion and the Nature of Bohr's Action-at-a-Distance Influence
Mermin suggests comparing my recent proof of quantum nonlocality to Bohr's reply to Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. Doing so leads naturally to the insight that the nonlocal influence deduced from the analysis of the Hardy experiment is the same as the nonlocal influence deduced by Bohr, and used by him to block the application of the criterion of physical reality proposed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. However, the greater sophistication of the Hardy experiment, as contrasted to the experiment considered by Bohr and the three authors, exposes more clearly than before the nature of this influence, and thereby strengthens Bohr's position.
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Pole_Factorization Theorem in Quantum Electrodynamics
In quantum electrodynamics a classical part of the S-matrix is normally factored out in order to obtain a quantum remainder that can be treated perturbatively without the occurrence of infrared divergences. However, this separation, as usually performed, introduces spurious large-distance effects that produce an apparent breakdown of the important correspondence between stable particles and poles of the S-matrix, and, consequently, lead to apparent violations of the correspondence principle and to incorrect results for computations in the mesoscopic domain lying between the atomic and classical regimes. An improved computational technique is described that allows valid results to be obtained in this domain, and that leads, for the quantum remainder, in the cases studied, to a physical-region singularity structure that, as regards the most singular parts, is the same as the normal physical-region analytic structure in theories in which all particles have non-zero mass. The key innovations are to define the classical part in coordinate space, rather than in momentum space, and to define there a separation of the photon-electron coupling into its classical and quantum parts that has the following properties: 1) The contributions from the terms containing only classical couplings can be summed to all orders to give a unitary operator that generates the coherent state that corresponds to the appropriate classical process, and 2) The quantum remainder can be rigorously shown to exhibit, as regards its most singular parts, the normal analytic structure.
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The Hard Problem: A Quantum Approach
Contents: 1. Introduction: Philosophical Setting 2. Quantum Model of the Mind/Brain 3. Person and Self 4. Meeting Baars's Criteria for Consciousness 5. Qualia 6. Free-Will
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Chance, Choice, and Consciousness: The Role of Mind in the Quantum Brain
Contemporary quantum mechanical description of nature involves two processes. The first is a dynamical process governed by the equations of local quantum field theory. This process is local and deterministic, but it generates a structure that is not compatible with observed reality. A second process is therefore invoked. This second process somehow analyzes the structure generated by the first process into a collection of possible observable realities, and selects one of these as the actually appearing reality. This selection process is not well understood. It is necessarily nonlocal and, according to orthodox thinking, is governed by an irreducible element of chance. The occurrence of this irreducible element of chance means that the theory is not naturalistic: the dynamics is controlled in part by something that is not part of the physical universe. The present work describes a quantum mechanical model of brain dynamics in which the quantum selection process is a causal process governed not by pure chance but rather by a mathematically specified nonlocal physical process identifiable as the conscious process.
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Quantum Electrodynamics at Large Distances II: Nature of the Dominant Singularities
Accurate calculations of macroscopic and mesoscopic properties in quantum electrodynamics require careful treatment of infrared divergences: standard treatments introduce spurious large-distances effects. A method for computing these properties was developed in a companion paper. That method depends upon a result obtained here about the nature of the singularities that produce the dominant large-distance behaviour. If all particles in a quantum field theory have non-zero mass then the Landau-Nakanishi diagrams give strong conditions on the singularities of the scattering functions. These conditions are severely weakened in quantum electrodynamics by effects of points where photon momenta vanish. A new kind of Landau-Nakanishi diagram is developed here. It is geared specifically to the pole-decomposition functions that dominate the macroscopic behaviour in quantum electrodynamics, and leads to strong results for these functions at points where photon momenta vanish.
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