Henry Stapp - Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?

Here’s the big question about consciousness, our inner experience of what things feel like. Is consciousness a product of the physical world alone? Because if consciousness is the output of the physical brain by itself, however complex, then consciousness as physicalism would defeat those who believe, or hope for, the existence of nonphysical realities.

Henry Stapp is an American physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics, particularly the development of axiomatic S-matrix theory, the proofs of strong nonlocality properties, and the place of free will in the "orthodox" quantum mechanics of John von Neumann.

[Laird]

Cross-referencing this thread with the thread Henry Stapp - Is Consciousness an Illusion?

I understand what he's saying, but I'm not convinced. At room temperature, superpositions in a complex quantum mechanical system, such as the brain, typically decohere within about 10⁻¹² seconds. This seems far too short to have any meaningful connection to consciousness.

Furthermore, I don’t think dualism needs quantum mechanics to be valid. If someone is inclined to believe in non-physical realms, they could just as well argue that classical mechanics is not causally closed, allowing for the possibility that the spiritual (or non-physical) realm interacts directly with neurons in the brain without involving quantum mechanics.

I understand what he's saying, but I'm not convinced. At room temperature, superpositions in a complex quantum mechanical system, such as the brain, typically decohere within about 10⁻¹² seconds. This seems far too short to have any meaningful connection to consciousness.

Furthermore, I don’t think dualism needs quantum mechanics to be valid. If someone is inclined to believe in non-physical realms, they could just as well argue that classical mechanics is not causally closed, allowing for the possibility that the spiritual (or non-physical) realm interacts directly with neurons in the brain without involving quantum mechanics.

I'm not convinced Stapp has the right mechanism for quantum biology, but I also think that is distinct from his arguments relating to the QM interpretation that consciousness plays a role in wave function collapse.

I would agree that since causation is a mystery, there is no genuine argument for causal closure of the physical.

I would agree that since causation is a mystery, there is no genuine argument for causal closure of the physical.

You don't find it peculiar that things always fall towards the earth and not away from the earth with those beliefs of yours?

You don't find it peculiar that things always fall towards the earth and not away from the earth with those beliefs of yours?

What does this have to do with the lack of explanation regarding causation?

Physics under-explains causation, if it explains much about causality at all.

What does this have to do with the lack of explanation regarding causation?

Physics under-explains causation, if it explains much about causality at all.

I asked because I don't fully understand what you mean by causation. If we assume the gravitational force exists (for whatever reason), doesn't that causally explain why things fall downward?

I asked because I don't fully understand what you mean by causation. If we assume the gravitational force exists (for whatever reason), doesn't that causally explain why things fall downward?

Well I was agreeing with you that the causal closure of the physical can be argued against by Dualists who don't want to depend on QM level explanations for mind-matter interaction. Not a Dualist, but I would agree with that claim.

When we say something is a force, we are drawing from the observations and asserting a level of confidence in a causal-effect relationship. But to me this is not an explanation of the actual reason we should be confident this relationship will hold.

Goes back to what Chomsky was saying, that Newton's conception of gravity was accepted because of its predictive success rather than a clear conception of what gravity is.

Goes back to what Chomsky was saying, that Newton's conception of gravity was accepted because of its predictive success rather than a clear conception of what gravity is.

I agree that we don’t fully understand what gravity is, but that doesn't imply that, because we lack a complete understanding, gravity can't be the causal mechanism behind objects falling downward.

My whole point is that I don’t understand you say causation is a mystery. We have very good causal explanations for all known classical properties. 

Those explanations could just be wrong of course.

I agree that we don’t fully understand what gravity is, but that doesn't imply that, because we lack a complete understanding, gravity can't be the causal mechanism behind objects falling downward.

My whole point is that I don’t understand you say causation is a mystery. We have very good causal explanations for all known classical properties. 

Those explanations could just be wrong of course.

You could say that gravity is a causal explanation, in a partial sense, though to me it seems what we really have are observations of regularities that we take as examples of "force" or "energy" governed by "laws of nature".

This doesn't really explain why there's a consistency that can be replicated, or even why we have gravitational constants rather than a large range of gravitational variability.

Hume, among others, observed this issue with causality - why some philosophers call a world that is only random a "Humean" possibility.

...Specifically, the mathematical machinery is neutral with regard to how these associations arise. Nowhere does it mention or need the idea of causal production or dependency between states of the system at different times. The only explicit associations in the function are between states of the system and points in time. It is the explicit and implicit associations represented in the function that contain the causal content of the theory. There is no need for the hypothesis that one state of the system might causally depend on or be connected to another by more than their places in the overall extrinsic pattern. If we choose to interpret the mathematics causally anyway, this interpretation is projecting something into the theory not explicitly represented nor logically required by its equations.

The second component of physical theories describes how these fields interact. I put interact in scare quotes because this part of the theory is also compatible with a Humean view of nature. The laws describing interactions express correlations between the evolutions of different fields. Like association, correlation is a weak relation and compatible
with the absence of any real connection between the fields. It is true that physical forces are supposed to mediate these interactions, but virtual particles carry these forces. We can always interpret virtual particles as further field elements entering the correlation story. In the end, a realist interpretation of the equations governing interaction requires only that we recognize the highly regular correlation between the evolutions of different fields. Like talk of connections of causal dependency, connections of interaction and exchange of information (in any active sense of information ) is projected into the theory. We do this because we would find the world the theory tells us about impossible to believe in without such connections and not because the theoretical apparatus logically requires us to think that way. Particularly, the theory does not represent causal connections...

  - Gregg Rosenberg, A Place for Consciousness 9.3 - Physics is not a theory of causation

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