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 Neumann’s 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 Hodgson’s 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 Neumann’s 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 ‘Doesn’t 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 Experimenter’s 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 Experimenter’s 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 Neumann’s 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 James’s 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.)