Beyond the Quantum
Essays in the New Physics Unifying Mind and Matter
by
Jack Sarfatti
This research has been funded by the Internet Science Education Project, a 501©(3) California Educational Corporation. Individuals and schools may use this information freely for non-commercial educational purposes. The corporation reserves all commercial rights.
Version 0.2
Certain new and original ideas are repeated many times like the leitmotifs in Richard Wagner's Operas. They are the deep attractors in the post-quantum mindscape which guides, and is guided by, the author's changing material brain configuration.
Making Star Trek Real
The considerations to be presented below naturally lead to the conjecture that any actual spacecraft capable of propellant-free flight using a practical post-quantum warp drive will itself have to be "alive", "sentient" and even "conscious". That is, any star ship capable of warp drive will have to be itself an artificially conscious entity. No purely classical or even purely quantum warp drive is possible. It needs post-quantum sentience. This is a strong prediction of post-quantum mechanics.
MARC G. MILLIS, Chair
NASA Lewis Research Center
FRANK MEAD, JR., Co-Chair
USAF Phillips Laboratory
In 1996, NASA established a small research program on "Breakthrough Propulsion Physics." This program looks beyond textbook science to seek the breakthroughs that could make deep space travel practical and affordable and ultimately enable interstellar voyages. Specifically, this means discovering breakthroughs to
(1) propel a vehicle without rockets or beamed power,
(2) attain the maximum transit speeds physically achievable, and
(3) create energy production methods to power such propulsion devices. Since this program looks beyond today's established science, a special emphasis is on ensuring that work is simultaneously credible and visionary -- credible progress toward incredible possibilities. Papers are invited that present theories, proposed experiments, or empirical evidence that are aimed at addressing any of the three breakthrough goals specified above. This includes:
(1) fundamental physics of forces and acceleration including the coupling between inertia, gravity, electromagnetism, inertial frames, and spacetime,
(2) fundamental physics of motion through spacetime or the motion of perturbations of spacetime, and
(3) fundamental physics of energy exchange mechanisms. Papers are also invited which
(4) describe and compare competing theories or empirical evidence with special emphasis to their potential for achieving any of the breakthrough goals. Papers are also invited which present lessons learned or suggestions for how to conduct such research that is simultaneously visionary and rigorously credible.
My response to this is:
The basic conclusion is that no practical classical or even orthodox quantum propellant-less warp drive is possible in principle. This is a consequence of Eberhard's theorem in the quantum case. Note the emphasis on the words "practical" and "propellant-less" in the above remark.
What is required is a post-quantum extension beyond orthodox quantum physics. Using the Bohm version of quantum mechanics, one can see that what is required for a practical propellant-less warp drive is a robust super-quantum potential attached to the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) canonical variables i.e. essentially the three-geometry, lapse and shift functions which are the quantum gravity "beables" in Bohm's theory.
One also needs a coupling to electromagnetic fields poised on the edge of chaos in which a weak electromagnetic field can trigger a self-organized critical avalanche in the super-quantum potential-metric beable system. This would allow the controlled manufacture of exotic matter from ordinary matter in a thin nanometer scale boundary layer around the ship. The Alcubierre and similar solutions can then be implemented.
The point is that robust quantum potentials are not allowed in orthodox quantum physics. Furthermore, the classical fields needed in the absence of a giant quantum potential are too strong for a practical device. As in quantum tunneling, the quantum potential reduces the required classical field intensities to trigger the avalanche phase transition from ordinary to exotic matter.
The key in all this is post-quantum backactivity which stabilizes the fragile quantum potentials into robust forms. More details are given below.
Einstein's Relativity in Bohm's Quantum Reality
Breaking Classical Codes with Quantum Computers, Info-War, Warp Drives, and all that.
It should never be forgotten that Einsteins special and general theories of relativity are strictly classical theories. There is no rational reason to suppose that they should not be modified at the quantum level where objective nonlocality and objective context-dependence are important as in David Bohms version of quantum reality. The late great Richard Feynman told me he was loathe to give up special relativitys Lorentz invariance even in the quantum regime. Unless we do, there is no chance of developing a practical "propellant-less" interstellar warp drive the way Marc Milliss NASA group at Lewis Space Center in Cleveland would like to do.
Nevertheless, Bohm and Hiley in The Undivided Universe (Chapter 12) write:
"... it is indeed possible to provide a Lorentz invariant [ontological] interpretation of the one-body Dirac equation. For the many-body system ... it is still possible to obtain a Lorentz invariant description of the manifest world of ordinary large scale experience ... In addition ... all statistical predictions of the quantum theory are Lorentz invariant in our interpretation. This means that our approach is consistent with Lorentz invariance in all experiments which are thus far possible." p.271
We must be ready for an observable objective breakdown of Einsteins relativity in post-quantum mechanics because of spontaneous self-organizing backactivity enabling "nonlocal communication". The term "nonlocal communication" means the use of Bohm's "objective wholeness" and "nonlocality" to make a new kind of "spooky telepathic" practical communication channel. It would be possible to locally decode messages at a "receiver" without having to wait for correlated data from the "sender" to arrive by luminal or subluminal means. The famous Aspect experiment in Paris did not show nonlocal communication. Indeed, there is a correct general proof that nonlocal communication is not possible in orthodox quantum mechanics. This no-go theorem can be directly traced to the fact that spontaneous self-organizing "backactivity" is negligible in the orthodox quantum limit where quantum sequences are irreducibly random. A good popular discussion of this is found in the late Heinz Pagelss The Cosmic Code. Self-organizing post-quantum backactivity introduces controllable non-randomness into quantum sequences. This has important consequences for recent research in "quantum cryptography", "quantum teleportation" and "quantum computation". Quantum computers, in principle, can rapidly break any classical code, though it cannot do so perfectly every time it tries. What can post-quantum computers do?
Bohm and Hiley continue:
"When this question is pursued further however, it is found that we cannot maintain a Lorentz invariant interpretation of the quantum nonlocal connection of distant systems. This is, of course, not surprising. Indeed we show that there has to be a unique frame in which these nonlocal connections are instantaneous. A similar result is also shown to hold for field theories. These likewise give Lorentz invariant results in the manifest world of ordinary experience..." p.271
What about the manifest world of alleged extraordinary "paranormal" experiences of modern-day Quasi-Scientific Shamans like Timothy Leary, John Lilly and Terrence McKenna, or CIA-certified remote viewers like Ingo Swann, for example? The theory of decoherent classical histories of Murray Gell-Mann and James Hartle opens Pandoras Box to the paranormal "universe next door" although they would not agree. I will return to this below, but, briefly, Bohm and Hiley remark:
"If there are many significantly different quasi-classical worlds ( as seems to be suggested in the many-universes point of view) one should better say that the IGUS (Information Gathering Utilization System) evolves to exploit a particular quasi-classical world or a set of such worlds." p. 340
Gell-Mann and Hartle are working within the late Everetts "many-minds" model rather that De Witts "splitting universes" model which is really quite different. Therefore, an alteration of the memories of the observers, as may happen under the influence of a psychedelic drug like ketamine or LSD, for example, would be tantamount to a shift of "preferred basis" in quantum Hilbert space into a different classical history than the one experienced by the majority of us IGUSs in "straight" modes of perception.
"... and for the statistical predictions of the quantum theory." p.271
Remember that Bohms ontological quantum mechanics applies to individual complex adaptive systems like ourselves in which statistical ensembles are physically inappropriate. Bohrs pragmatic "Copenhagen interpretation" is trapped in the rut of statistics. A good example of being caught in that conceptual straight jacket is Victor Stengers book, The Unconscious Quantum.
"But where individual quantum processes are concerned, our ontological interpretation requires a unique frame of the kind we have described both for field theories and particle theories." p. 271
Our streams of inner-felt consciousness are individual non-random animate post-quantum processes and the role of Bohms "unique frame" is amplified from what it is for individual inanimate random quantum processes. Why does a rock not have a conscious mind in the same way we have one? The essential objective difference between an animate post-quantum process and an inanimate quantum process, is that the former has, and the latter does not have, spontaneous self-organization in a "two-way" relationship between the "common pool", or quantum mind-field of "active information" with its attached "beable", which is the relevant part of the classical material brain configuration. The quantum mind-field of active information is beyond space and time in configuration space and Hilbert space. The complex adaptive animate beable is located as space and time separated parts of a post-quantum computing machine coherently organized by the common pool of macroscopically-coherent active quantum information. The post-quantum conscious computer is beyond any classical machine determined by pre-assigned interactions between its separated parts. Unlike an orthodox quantum computer of the kind described by David Deutsch, for example, the post-quantum computer is able to exploit nonlocal communication. Direct evidence for this in our own brains is given in a paper by Fred Alan Wolf on Libets experiments to be presented at the Vigier Conference at York University in Toronto in August 1997. Inner-felt experiences are simply the back-active imprints of the beable configuration on its guiding common pool of active quantum information. This is a more general objective physical definition of conscious life that is not restricted to self-organizing non-equilibrium carbon-based autocatalytic molecular networks "poised on the edge between order and chaos", though it certainly applies to them. See Stuart Kauffmans At Home In The Universe for background information on autocatalytic molecular networks and their associated classical "self-organized criticality" phase transitions. Post-quantum mechanics supplements and, thereby completes Kauffmans classical picture of how spontaneous self-organization is prior to Darwinian natural selection in the evolution of life. To see how this same idea applies to the evolution of the whole physical universe see Lee Smolins, The Life of the Cosmos.
Bohm and Hiley continue:
"We discuss the meaning of this preferred frame and show that the idea is not only perfectly consistent, but also fits in with an important tradition regarding the way in which new levels of reality (e.g. atoms) are introduced in physics to explain older levels (e.g. continuous matter) on a qualitatively new basis." p. 271
In the case of the one-body Dirac equation, one can imagine, in Bohms ontology, a non-equilibrium dissipative structure of the hidden variables that violates the Born probability rule that the density in configuration space is |psi|2. That this is sufficient for nonlocal communication, if the non-equilibrium can be maintained, was demonstrated in Valentinis Cambridge University doctoral dissertation under Dennis Sciama. I thank Brian Josephson for communicating that fact to me. The modified relativistic continuity equation for probability current has a sub-quantal "osmotic" contribution (p. 273), as in Vigiers models, which provides
"a non-covariant process of approach to (thermal) equilibrium" (p. 274). The thermal equilibrium distribution is Lorentz invariant. Note that our universe is not in global thermal equilibrium because of the cosmological expansion of three-dimensional space out of the big bang. Note also "The osmotic velocity ... may be infinite where rho approaches zero and would imply speeds greater than that of light.. it leads to no inconsistencies." (p.274).
The next case is the formal Dirac equation for a many-body system (12.4) even in the standard non-ontological Copenhagen interpretation
"...at least as far as probabilities are concerned, the many-body Dirac equation is Lorentz invariant both in form and content .. what about Lorentz invariance in the ontological interpretation of the many-body Dirac equation? (12.6) ... a nonlocal connection in the velocities of the particles implies a nonlocal quantum potential that accounts for the mutually related accelerations that are entailed by the guidance conditions." p. 281... the ontological interpretation gives the same statistical results for all measurement-manifestation processes as does the usual interpretation. ... However, ... it does not follow that the ontological interpretation for an individual system in terms of a [beable] particle with a well-defined trajectory is a Lorentz invariant concept. ... If there is a nonlocal connection of the kind implied by our guidance conditions, then it follows that, for example, point a and point b instantaneously affect each other. But if the theory is covariant, there should be similar instantaneous connections in every Lorentz frame. ... It would then be possible for A acting at a to affect its own past. " p.282
Indeed, Fred Alan Wolf presents an interpretation of Libets experimental brain data that suggests that we affect our own pasts every time we exercise free will over times shorter than about one and a half seconds. Wolfs interpretation of Libets data makes perfect theoretical sense in Bohms ontological interpretation extended from quantum to post-quantum mechanics where nonlocal communication is possible and one can detect the effects of the preferred frame.
Bohm and Hiley continue with the worn caveat, also mentioned by Penrose in his popular books on mind and matter:
"This would evidently imply a paradoxical situation (e.g. as in the case of a person who killed his own father before he was conceived and in doing so annihilated himself so that he was incapable of carrying out the assumed action)." p.282
Kip Thorne in his popular book, Black Holes and Time Warps give the way out of this paradox. Briefly, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry to paraphrase the venerable Scottish Bard, Robert Burns. In the case of autocidal loops they always go awry. We do not have free will to make a time-travel paradox. There is "global self-consistency" around closed time-like world lines (CTC's). The quantum amplitudes for inconsistent histories around closed loop exactly vanish as surely as it is impossible to put two electrons in the same quantum state. Nonlocal form-dependent quantum forces will always intervene to prevent a paradox involving time travel to the past.
Bohm and Hiley then summarize Eberhards theorem that prevents nonlocal communication in orthodox quantum mechanics.
"Of course, until we are able to carry out experiments on individual processes that are more accurate than the limits set by the uncertainty principle, it will not be possible to use quantum nonlocality for the purpose of sending signals." p.282
Note, that Asher Peres, using Bohrs epistemological interpretation, shows that nonlocal communication violates the classical limit of the second law of thermodynamics. That is the post-quantum Maxwell Demon can actually put the fast particles in one side of the partitioned box. Note the qualifier "classical limit". Bohms "beables" are not subject to the uncertainty principle on the individual level. The measurement statistics do, of course, obey the uncertainty principle. David Albert, using a "many-minds" interpretation, shows that certain pairs of non-commuting observables involving the strange loops of Godelian self-reference evade the uncertainty principle allowing "photographs of other worlds". The case is far from closed on these counter-intuitive extraordinary claims.
"For as shown in chapter 7, in statistical measurements the EPR ( Einstein Podolsky Rosen) correlations between distant particles do not make it possible for signals to be sent from one particle to another. More generally any attempt to send a signal by influencing one of a pair of particles under EPR correlation will encounter the difficulties arising from the irreducibly participatory nature of all quantum processes. If for example we tried to modulate the overall wavefunction so that it could carry a signal in a way similar to what is done by a radio wave, we would find that the whole pattern of this wave would be so fragile that its order could change radically in a chaotic and complex way. As a result no signal could be carried." p.284
The key word here is "fragile". Stuart Kauffman discusses "random fitness landscapes" ( e.g. maximally compressed, therefore "random" algorithms) on the chaotic side of "the edge of chaos". One can imagine a self-organized critical phase transition in the distribution of the beables "on the edge" in which "fragile" changes to "robust". Indeed, this is exactly what happens when the feedback-control circuit switches between pilot-wave and beable are closed as post-quantum backactivity wins out against external environmental decoherence. This is when post-quantum backactivity reins in Darwinian natural selection. Brian Josephson and co-workers have called this "the biological utilization of quantum nonlocality". Orthodox quantum mechanics with its "uncontrollably" random sequences, limited by Eberhards theorem preventing nonlocal communication, is exactly and profoundly parallel to orthodox evolutionary biology which relies totally on random Darwinian natural selection. Bohms ontological quantum theory, like Kauffman's post-Darwinian evolutionary biological theory, has the "fitness landscape" also used by neural network theorists trying to make more intelligent computers. This is no accident!
Kauffman writes:
"Selection, then, confronts twin limitations: it is trapped or frozen into local regions of very rugged landscapes, and, on smooth landscapes, it suffers the error catastrophe and melts off peaks, so the genotype becomes less fit. Selection may not be powerless in the face of these limitations, for selection can play a role in molding the ruggedness of the landscapes over which the organisms evolve.. But ... it seems doubtful that selection alone can ensure friendly landscapes. Perhaps another source of order is required. Evolution may be impossible without the privilege of working with systems that already exhibit internal order, with fitness landscapes already naturally tuned so that natural selection can get a foothold and do its job. ... Self-organization may be the precondition of evolvability itself. Only those systems that are able to organize themselves spontaneously may be able to evolve further. How far we have come from a simple picture of selection merely sifting for fitter variants. Evolution is far more subtle and wonderful." p. 185 At Home in the Universe
Kauffman then describes the classical biological analog of post-quantum backactivity of the classical beable to its quantum potential that provides the beables "fitness landscape".
"Not only to organisms evolve, but, we must suppose, the structure of the landscapes that organisms explore also evolves. Since selection faces an error catastrophe on very smooth landscapes and can become very excessively trapped in small regions of the space of possibilities on very rugged landscapes, we must also begin to suspect that selection seeks good landscapes ... such landscapes must be highly correlated not random. ... self-organization is a prerequisite for evolvability, ... it generates the kind of structures that can benefit from natural selection. It generates structures that can evolve gradually, that are robust, for there is an inevitable relationship among spontaneous order, robustness, redundancy, gradualism, and correlated landscapes.. another name for ... robustness ... is structural stability." p.188 ibid.
The would-be interstellar warp-drive engineers, who need a controllable giant super-quantum potential of the space-time metric beable, should take note of the "self-organized criticality" of a sandpile in a child's sandbox.
"Big and little events can be triggered by the same kind of tiny cause. Poised systems need no massive power to move massively." p. 236 ibid.
My hypothetical spontaneously self-organizing sentient post-quantum potential-beable system is not "fragile" the way the non-sentient orthodox quantum potential-beable system is.
Let us, reluctantly, but only temporarily, leave the fascinating really new notion of mutable post-quantum landscapes of sentient complex adaptive systems, deformed by the behavior of their attached classical beables, which they also partially guide, back to Bohms way of connecting relativity to the quantum. Bohms way divides the classical world of beables into fermion point particles and boson gauge fields like the electromagnetic and gravitational fields. Remember that ordinary non-exotic fermion particles of quantum spin hbar/2 obey the Pauli exclusion principle i.e., only one particle per single-particle state i.e. "mode", while non-exotic boson fields of spin 0, 1 or 2 units of hbar, can have any number of "quanta" in the same mode. Non-exotic matter obeys the several energy conditions required by the classical blackhole singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose as described in their new important, but difficult, book, The Nature of Space and Time. Even the spin of particles, in Bohms theory, is not seen as an actual rotation of an extended particle, but of a new kind of mutable "circulatory motion" (Ch.10). Bohms theory contradicts the standard view of spin given, for example, in Vic Stengers conventional (like Gell-Manns The Quark and the Jaguar) book, The Unconscious Quantum. Stenger describes spin as "intrinsic".
"Many properties of matter are fixed and, for practical purposes, permanent ... these include rest masses, electric charge, magnetic moment and spin." p. 79
In stark contrast, Bohm and Hiley write:
".. the intrinsic angular momentum of a given particle is seen to be very much a contextual property, not only with regard to its direction, but also with regard to its absolute value. This is affected not only by the environment supplied by the measuring apparatus, but also by the presence of other particles and by the wavefunction of the combined system." p.228
Nonlocal quantum connections do not permit the equality of all special relativistic frames of reference. This is not as bad as it first sounds because even classical general relativity demotes the idea of the global special relativistic class of inertial frames to purely "local inertial frames" in the tangent space of the curved manifold. The Hubble flow of the expanding space in the standard big bang cosmological solution of Einsteins gravitational field equations for the space-time metric geometry is Bohms preferred global frame in which the several quantum potentials act instantaneously. This preferred frame is operationally defined as that in which the cosmic blackbody photons are isotropically distributed in all directions of space at a definite absolute temperature. One can easily navigate star ships with post-quantum warp drives through self-organized time gates using the readily detectable Hubble flow as ancient mariners used the North Star.
For boson fields
"... the trajectory of the beables corresponds to a single point in the configuration space of the total set of field variables." p. 240
Consider the quantum vacuum of a boson field like the electromagnetic field. It is spatially chaotic, but Bohm and Hiley write:
"... the field is static. This result is surprising as one generally thinks that the zero point fluctuations of the vacuum correspond to some kind of chaotic dynamical behavior ... The ground state energy which we ordinarily ascribe to the dynamic behavior will now be attributed to the super-quantum potential. This is analogous to the particle case in a stationary state ... in an excited state, the energy of the quantum potential enters into the quantum transitions in the same way that the kinetic energy would in the classical limit ... the ground state is not covariant because it defines a favored frame." pp 245-46
I am ignoring ad-hoc dynamical additions, such as Vigiers, from the "sub-quantal level". String excitations may form the sub-quantal level in Vigiers sense. Note the Unruh effect, related to Hawkings thermal radiation from tiny blackholes, in which a probe in constant acceleration through flat space-time detects blackbody photons of absolute temperature determined by the acceleration.
What about excited states of the boson field? Consider a "Fock state" with a single real quantum in it.
"From the actual value of the [beable] field one could not say for certain whether the state is excited or not because the same [classical] field configuration can exist in either state. Indeed, the degree of excitation is determined only with the aid of the super-quantum potential which involves the state of the [objective] whole." p.248
Consider a localized wave packet summation over several classical modes "inside this wave packet the super-quantum potential introduces nonlocal connections between fields at different points separated by a finite distance (unlike what happens in the ground state)."
Again this is for Fock states with a definite number of quanta and random phases. It is not for the coherent Glauber states, i.e. minimum uncertainty wave packets, where the super-quantum potential is zero. I do not know what happens when we squeeze the Glauber state from a circle to an ellipse in the P-Q phase space? Is the super-quantum potential still zero? We cannot have practical star ship warp drives if the Einstein quantum gravity field is in a Glauber type state which does not have any nonlocal connectivity directly connecting "fields at different points". Remember the gravity field is special because it determines the space-time geometry giving meaning to "different points". Therefore, any kind of practical warp drive has to make a really exotic quantum gravity state over astronomical distances with an enormous super-quantum potential. This requires manipulation of some kind of "self-organized critical instability" as in the inflation theory of cosmology. The alleged inflation that flattened out the three dimensional space of our visible universe would be like an uncontrolled nuclear fission explosion. We need the analog to a "nuclear reactor". Penrose does not like the inflation theory and there may be a viable alternative in the vision of post-quantum gravity made more clear using Bohms ideas with spontaneous self-organization put into the foreground rather than hidden in the background.
Bohm's and Hiley's 12.8 "On the meaning of non-Lorentz invariance of processes involving individual beables" is very important especially in view of Roger Penroses note that energy in classical general relativity is "nonlocal".
"... our ontological interpretation leads to Lorentz invariant results in the manifest world of ordinary experience." p.288
Except perhaps for alleged paranormal phenomena and certain kinds of extraordinary experiences by people in altered states of consciousness whether by mind-altering chemicals or meditation.
"and also in the statistical predictions of quantum theory. These two fields cover all the experimental knowledge that we have so far." ibid.
Note Bohm's and Hiley's use of the qualifier "so far". They exclude common biological phenomena because the conceptual link of post-quantum physics to biological phenomena in general is not emphasized as "a form of insight" in their book. It is latent in the background. It is not explicated -- to use Bohms term. Once we make the proper paradigm shift to a new way of looking, all biological phenomena are instantly reinterpreted, in a Gestalt shift of perception as it were, as direct evidence for post-quantum self-organization supplemented by classical forms of "spontaneous self-organization" (e.g. autocatalytic molecular networks), as described by Stuart Kauffman, and tweaked by Darwinian natural selection which "captures chance on the wing" (Monod). "Evidence" does not exist in a conceptual vacuum raw and unadulterated. One mans evidence is another mans irrelevance depending on their theoretical frame of reference.
"But as long as the quantum theory is valid, there is no way to demonstrate this non-Lorentz invariance experimentally." ibid.
This is a corollary to Eberhards theorem, which prevents nonlocal communication in orthodox quantum mechanics. Remember, "post-quantum mechanics" is the larger theory that includes orthodox "quantum mechanics" as the limiting case of effectively vanishing self-organizing "backactivity" from "beable" to "quantum potential" or "fitness landscape". Thus, post-quantum mechanics is to quantum mechanics as general relativity is to special relativity. Special relativity is the limiting case of general relativity when the space-time geometry becomes globally flat with zero curvature everywhere. Thus, there is an analogy between classical curvature and post-quantum backactivity. Both create feedback-control loops. Classical curvature closes the switch completing the feedback-control loop circuit between mass-energy with the classical space-time geometry. Both are beables. Post-quantum backactivity closes the switch completing the feedback-control loop circuit between Bohms classical "beables" of mass-energy and space-time geometry with the quantum mind-field whose range is quantum Hilbert space and whose domain is classical configuration space. Both of these spaces are literally beyond classical space-time geometry, which is now, as we have indicates already, a new Bohm beable. "Space-time" started out as the "arena" with the "beables" inside it. Now "space-time" is itself a beable inside a larger space, a "common pool" of mind-like implicate "active information". Quantum Hilbert space, classical configuration space, classical space-time, all of these spaces are "real" in the ontological sense. This is how I intended the meaning of "Beyond" in the 1975 Space-Time and Beyond written in Paris Cafes with Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben inspired by Cabalist-Artist-Poet, Carlo Suares -- although my ideas then were, understandably, not as clear as they are now over twenty years later. Quantum Hilbert space really is a space of implicate information which is essentially "mental" or mind-like. Implicate information is not the same as Claude Shannons information, which is, explicate information. Shannons implicate information is described in Feynmans Lectures on Computation (1996).
"... our ontological interpretation helps bring out a fundamental inconsistency between relativity and quantum theory centered on the question of nonlocality." p.289
Murray Gell-Mann in his book, The Quark and the Jaguar, really takes a cheap shot at this legitimate problem of "nonlocality" calling it "The Story Distorted". In fact he there cites a very influential letter to Under Secretary of Defense, Richard De Lauer, co-written by me with A. L. Chickering, the director of the then key Presidential think tank, Institute for Contemporary Studies, as evidence for his view although he does not mention my name explicitly. However, my connection with that notorious letter is well known having been mentioned in Physics Today in connection with an article by Cornells (my alma mater) N. D. Mermin. It is also mentioned by Jeremy Bernstein in his article on John Bell, "Quantum Engineer" which, I think, was originally an article in The New Yorker. As in the trial of Socrates, I am accused of corrupting the innocence of physics! David Finkelstein, my guest at Esalen in 1975 where I directed the first Physics/Consciousness Research Group, told me it would take twenty years before the physics establishment would forgive me for Space-Time and Beyond. It's taking longer than that! :-)
"... other interpretations of the quantum theory also imply nonlocality, though not in such a clear way..." ibid.
Indeed, E. J. Squires has gone so far as to claim that even Gell-Manns "decoherent histories" alternative requires nonlocality! This is something worth looking into elsewhere. As we shall see in detail below, one can exclude faster-than-light nonlocality from Gell-Mann's model, as he says, but the price paid is very high. The price is the total loss of morally responsible free will.
"... either we accept nonlocality, in which case relativity is not fully adequate in the quantum domain, or we reject nonlocality, in which case quantum theory is not fully adequate in the relativistic domain. Of course, it is also possible that both theories may break down somewhere in the domain in which they meet." ibid.
It is Bohms third alternative that I think is true. The one clear idea that David Finkelstein had when he was my guest at Esalen was that there was always a "third alternative". Post-quantum backactivity giving a sentient self-organizing ability modifies both relativity and quantum mechanics. Penroses link between consciousness and post-quantum gravity is a major clue to solving the puzzle of existence in a scientific way with super-technological spin-off worth trillions of dollars in new wealth to the Earths economy in the 21st Century. That is my "hunch".
Bohm and Hiley say that classical Lorentz invariance breaks down for individual complex physical processes. Nonlocal quantum connections require a unique preferred frame in which the quantum potential acts instantaneously. This suggests a quantum vacuum that breaks the symmetry of the Lorentz group in precisely the same way that ferromagnets "spontaneously" break the symmetry of the rotation group. Lorentz invariance also breaks down at both large and small distances. Thus:
"The most essential feature of special relativity is Lorentz invariance. We already know that Lorentz invariance must be limited at large distances where the effects of curvature are appreciable. We can also give an argument showing that Lorentz invariance must be limited at short distances (probably at the order of the Planck length)." p.289
If Roger Penrose is in the right ball park with his amazing idea that our inner-felt experiences are essentially a post-quantum gravity effect, then the effective breakdown of Lorentz invariance must also happen at much larger distances than the Planck length of 10-33 cm in connection with mental states. There is alleged evidence for this breakdown in the highly debated extraordinary paranormal claims of "remote viewing" especially those with "precognition" as reported in "Project Scanate" especially with Ingo Swann. Whether or not these particular claims are true is not really the point here. The point is that Penroses theory together with Bohms and my "backactivity" extension of Bohm, makes such claims much more plausible. A major reason why conservative scientists reject such claims a-priori is because they appear to conflict with basic laws of physics. That alleged conflict may not be a fact because of hypothetical persistent giant nonlocal quantum connections linking space-like separated mind-brain systems as well as connecting the same mind-brain system at different times. That is, ordinary memory may be the local decoding of messages held in a time-like nonlocal quantum connection. The theory of this would involve extending Cramers "transactional interpretation" and Aharonovs "multiple-time" interpretation to include backactivity so that Eberhards theorem can be violated. I am suggesting that ordinary consciousness requires post-quantum "nonlocal communication" in an essential way. In other words, the hypothesis is that our inner felt awareness violates orthodox quantum theory which is only the inanimate limit of a more general theory in the same way that general relativity violates special relativity over large distances when curvature is important. Even though our universe appears to be spatially flat cosmologically there is significant mixed space-time curvature, and, of course, there is significant spatial curvature in black holes.
Bohm and Hiley imagine a four-vector, whose three-vector spatial part is broken up into many small pieces on a straight line. One makes a Lorentz transformation from the initial frame to a uniformly moving frame. This requires using the metric tensor, which has large quantum fluctuations at the Planck scale so that we no longer have the simple diagonal form, required by special relativity.
"It is clear that what was a simple line vector is transformed into a rather foggy distribution of constituent elements which are not well defined. So the whole idea of a simple Lorentz transformation of one line into another breaks down. The idea of Lorentz invariance only becomes relevant over intermediate distances for which the fluctuations of guv [i.e. the metric tensor] will average out to something relatively small, implying that guv can be taken as effectively constant. ... the Lorentz group may not be as fundamental as we have generally assumed. ... The analysis given in this chapter suggests that even at intermediate distances it may cease to be valid for individual processes involving the beables wherever quantum nonlocality is important." p.290
We can now get a new form of physical insight in Bohms sense. Remember that the only reason that orthodox quantum fluctuations are "uncontrollably random", e.g. Bohrs "Copenhagen interpretation", is because, in Bohms paradigm, the quantum potential acts on its attached classical "beable" without any direct feedback-control mechanism in place. The quantum potential is "fragile" or unstable. This is the physical reason why Eberhards theorem preventing nonlocal communication works. If there is direct feedback-control Eberhards theorem fails, the quantum potential is "robust". This corresponds to a non-equilibrium "self-organized critical" phase transition "on the complexity edge" from chaos to order in which the quantum potential passes from a "fragile" to a "robust" form. This phase transition occurs when random environmental impacts on the "beable" are screened out in the natural course of biological evolution e.g. Stuart Kauffmans book, At Home in the Universe. In our case, the relevant biology is that of the microtubules inside the cells of our body. This is consistent with Brian Josephsons et-al notion that biological systems can "utilize quantum nonlocality" in a new way beyond the limits of orthodox irreducibly random quantum processes. Now what Roger Penrose is suggesting is that the self-organized post-quantum gravity fluctuations in the microtubules are not random. Therefore, the effective fluctuations of the metric tensor are not averaging out precisely in those space-time regions where inner-felt experience is being generated! That is, what Hameroff calls "fundamental space-time" is not at all limited to the Planck scale, but is at the directly accessible "mesoscopic" scale of nanotechnology. This is a bold idea! I could never understand Hameroffs seemingly wild claims until I could reformulate it in my own way using Bohms intuitive picture of the world. We must get away from the epistemological interpretations where statistical ensembles are primary. That is the fundamental error of Vic Stengers book, The Unconscious Quantum. It is also the fundamental error in the recent text book by Asher Peres though that book has interesting things in it. This new form of insight is absolutely crucial to the NASA objective of making a practical interstellar warp drive.
"We are thus led to assume something similar to a unique universal frame, or more accurately, to a universal order of succession." ibid.
Take the Hubble flow of our expanding universe, for example. It is the natural choice, and it is Bohms choice for the "unique original frame" in which the quantum potentials act instantaneously. It is operationally defined by the isotropy, to within the COBE variations of a few parts in one hundred thousand, of the cosmic blackbody radiation. Note that these same photons which define the preferred frame also enforce the classical limit for large objects as a primary source for environmental decoherence on anything larger than a dust particle, e.g. 8.3 and 11.10 in The Undivided Universe. The primordial thermal radiation, which is the after-glow from the big bang, is the "North Star" of the Star Ship Navigator. The absolute temperature of that radiation gives the time from the big bang, and the isotropy gives the preferred state of "rest" on the cosmological scale. This is all operational, pragmatic and positivistic. It is more than the latter of course. It suggests a deeper connection.
"In certain ways such a theory is reminiscent of the Lorentz-type ether theory within which there were large scale objects with structures undergoing processes that would change with velocity in such a way as to bring about Lorentz invariance in terms of frames defined through these structures. p. 290 .... It follows from this sort of argument that Lorentz invariance is perfectly compatible with the assumption of an absolute frame such as that of the ether. Therefore there is no way from the experimental facts alone to prove there is no absolute frame determining a universal order of succession.
However, for various reasons which were mainly aesthetic or philosophical, such a notion of a universal time order was rejected early in the twentieth century." p. 291
So much for the conventional wisdom of Physics 101! :-) Of course the classical ether theory was "very complex and implausible" and Einstein rightly rejected it in 1905. But that was before quantum theory, and what Bohm is talking about is a new ball game relative to the information Einstein had in 1905.
"Nevertheless physics developed in such a way that some features of the ether theory were retained. Thus Einstein in his general theory attributed properties to empty space in the form of the gravitational tensor, guv. Einstein therefore later came to say that his field theories were theories of a relativistic ether that did not involve detailed descriptions of any mechanisms. It was essential for Einstein that such theories should be local and thus he was able to retain Lorentz invariance, at least in regions that were not too large ... But now we have additional reasons to limit Lorentz invariance implying that it does not hold even in the small. And nonlocality further suggests that even in intermediate domains, Lorentz invariance no longer holds for individual processes involving the beables, but is valid only in the manifest domain and in statistical applications of the quantum theory." p. 292
Of Flesh and Ghosts
A Sarfatti Commentary on Self-Organization as Post-Quantum Physics
Work in Progress
Version 0.4
"I, born of flesh and ghost, was neither"
Dylan Thomas's "Before I Knocked"
Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe, The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (AHU) (Oxford, 1995) is a popularization of his The Origins of Order. Kauffman's new idea is that Darwinian natural selection from random variations while necessary is not sufficient to explain evolution. There is also a "spontaneous self-organizing" mechanism. This idea is compatible with the extension of quantum mechanics to post-quantum mechanics based upon the Bohm interpretation. While other interpretations, such as Penroses and Stapps, give corresponding results, the connection of the latter to Kauffman's "spontaneous self-organization" is not as immediately transparent as it is in Bohms version.
Kauffman says that though "Creation Science" is wrong, the Christian Fundamentalists who believe in it have the valid motivation to restore a sense of the sacred in modern culture. Simple Darwinism poignantly and depressingly expressed in a famous essay by Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre and hordes of anguished Existentialists, makes that impossible. Kauffman writes:
"Darwin devastated this world. .... Evolution left us stuck on the earth with no ladder to climb, contemplating our fate as natures Rube Goldberg machines. Random variation, selection-sifting. Here is the core, the root. Here lies the brooding sense of accident, of historical contingency, of design by elimination. ... We humans, a trumped-up, tricked-out, horn-blowing, self-important presence on the globe, need never have occurred. So much for our pretensions; we are lucky to have our hour. So much, too, for paradise." (p.7)
I am reminded of a song in Gilbert and Sullivans Princess Ida, whose theme was Darwinism in which:
"a maid of lineage high, was loved by an ape in the days gone by,
the maid was radiant as the Sun, the ape was a most unsightly one...":
"The world is but a broken toy,
Its pleasures hollow, false its joy,
Unreal its loveliest hue, Alas!
Its pains alone are true, Alas!
Its pains alone are true."
I first sang it in 1957 at Cornell as Prince Hilarion with Jeremy Bernsteins sister Alice as Princess Ida.
Fortunately there is a silver lining behind this grim Darwinian cloud -- simple Darwinism is not enough!
"I shall argue in this book that this idea is wrong. For, as we shall see, the emerging sciences of complexity begin to suggest that the order is not at all accidental, that vast veins of spontaneous order lie at hand." (p.8)
It is my thesis that the fundamental physical mechanism behind Kauffmans bold hypothesis is an extension of quantum mechanics to a new "post-quantum mechanics". The seeds for this extension can be found in Bohms final work with Basil Hiley, The Undivided Universe (UU) (Routledge, 1993).
Bohms idea is that the world, at least in the low-energy limit relevant to biology, divides into two real or "ontological parts" that I will call "beables" and "pilot-waves" (a.k.a. "quantum field"). The beables are essentially both the particles, electromagnetic and gravitational fields of classical physics up to the end of the 19th century. These classical gauge fields should not be confused with the quantum fields (a.k.a. the pilot-waves) which are qualitatively different. We can also add the weak and strong gauge fields of the standard model of elementary particles on the beable side of the ledger. The beables, under certain approximate conditions, do accurately behave like a reductionistic mechanical machine in which the whole is not more than the sum of its parts. This is the classical level where the influences of the pilot-waves are negligible. Things are qualitatively different at the quantum level. The beables are objects in ordinary three-dimensional space, the pilot-waves not. They span two new kinds of spaces called Hilbert space and configuration space. There are faster-than-light "nonlocal connections" which do exert "spooky telepathic" actions-at-a-distance connecting widely separated parts into a whole greater than their simple sum. Kauffman still thinks of an "emergent" self-organizing order, but Bohm has something much more profound. Einsteins relativity is only valid at the classical level. It is not valid for individual quantum events. Nevertheless, these nonlocal connections cannot be used for practical faster-than-light signaling or "nonlocal communication" because of a very peculiar fact about standard, or "orthodox", quantum mechanics which is:
"... unlike what happens with Maxwells equations for example, the Schrodinger equation for the quantum field does not have sources, nor does it have any other way by which the field could be directly affected by the conditions of the particles. This of course constitutes an important difference between quantum fields and other fields that have thus far been used." p. 30
Here is a key sentence, note the use of the word "completely":
"As we shall see, however, the quantum theory can be understood completely in terms of the assumption that the quantum field has no sources or other forms of dependence on the particles. We shall in ... section 14.6, go into what it would mean to have such dependence and we shall see that this would imply that the quantum theory is an approximation with a limited domain of validity." p. 30
Such a source of the quantum field would violate conservation of quantum probability current in the 3n dimensional configuration space of n point particles in an entangled quantum state, for example. This conservation for the probability current flow is the key assumption used in Eberhards theorem, which forbids nonlocal communication in quantum mechanics. The quantum fields of post-quantum mechanics have such sources, which I call "backactivity". These post-quantum fields are intrinsically self-organizing the way Kauffman needs them to be. I hope to make this clear below. In section 14.6 "Extension of our approach beyond the domain of current quantum theory" Bohm and Hiley introduce the idea of "post-quantum backactivity", though they do not use that name for the idea. Thus,:
"Other changes ... that might be considered would be to ... introduce terms that would relate the Schrodinger wave function to the particle positions. (Again in such a way that significantly new results would follow only in new domains not yet investigated.)" p. 345
Bohm had short distances in mind. However, the new domain will involve the larger mesoscopic distances where carbon-based life is found. Bohm and Hiley continue:
"One way to make Schrodingers equation dependent on the particle positions (so that there would be a two-way relationship between wave and particle) can be seen by considering equation (14.1). In this equation, we can regard Rn as the actual position of the nth particle. From the same arguments as apply to the GRW approach, it would follow that the overall wave function would tend to collapse toward the actual particle positions, so that, in a large scale system, the empty wave packets of our interpretation would tend to disappear." p. 346
The keywords for Kauffmans spontaneous non-random self-organization, upon which random Darwinian natural selection operates, is the "two-way relationship between wave and particle". One must clearly understand that orthodox quantum mechanics, with its irreducible randomness and its Eberhard theorem forbidding nonlocal communication, is based upon a one-way relationship of, in the simplest example, a quantum wave acting on its attached classical particle. The qualitatively new Bohm quantum force -- not the two-way relationship that defines post-quantum mechanics, describes this. This two-way relationship is the fundamental adaptive feedback-control loop for Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization". To see this more clearly requires understanding the idea of the "fitness landscape" and how Bohms quantum potential provides it. One must also understand what physically differentiates living matter from non-living matter.
There is no actual collapse in a quantum measurement in Bohms version of orthodox quantum mechanics. Rather it is "collapse without collapse". However, there is an ontological collapse in the post-quantum mechanics with the two-way relationship in which Bohms quantum force is balanced by backactivity. Thus, Bohms approach meets both Stapps and Penroses ontological collapse models. Penrose uses the term "orchestrated" which suggests self-organization, but it is only in Bohms version that we have a clear intuitive visualizable understanding of why there should be such "orchestration". The orchestration is from the "two-way relationship between wave and particle". On the other hand, there is nothing in Bohms version that demands Penroses link of "orchestration" to quantum gravity with the emission of a single graviton. The work of Lee Smolin, Ashtekar and others suggests that Penroses idea of a "single graviton" is an artifact only of an inappropriate perturbation theory. A non-perturbative quantum gravity theory will not have wavy quanta like photons as all the current popular books suggest, but will rather have stringy one-dimensional beables at the Planck scale of 10-33 cm. It is not yet at all clear if non-perturbative quantum gravity, when completed, will invalidate Penroses idea. His idea is that our inner-felt experiences depend upon an ontological self-collapse of the wave function of the nanometer scale microtubule network subsystem inside the cells of our bodies. This objective post-quantum collapse is triggered by single graviton emission breaking the coherent quantum superposition of alternative space-time geometries. For details of Penroses idea see The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (Oxford, 1997).
Consider the problem on faster-than-light "nonlocal communication". Bohm and Hiley write:
"For several centuries, there has been a strong feeling that nonlocal theories are not acceptable in physics. It is well known, for example, that Newton felt very uneasy about action-at-a-distance and that Einstein regarded it as spooky. One can understand this feeling, but if one reflects deeply and seriously on this subject one can see nothing basically irrational about such an idea. Rather it seems to be most reasonable to keep an open mind on the subject and therefore allow oneself to explore this possibility. If the price of avoiding nonlocality is to make an intuitive explanation impossible, one has to ask whether the cost is not too great.
The only serious objection we can see to nonlocality is that, at first sight, it does not seem to be compatible with relativity, because nonlocal connections in general would allow a transmission of signals faster than the speed of light. ... we extend the causal interpretation to a relativistic context and show that although nonlocality is still present, it does not introduce any inconsistencies into the the theory, e.g. it does not imply that we can use the quantum potential to transmit a signal faster-than-light." pp.57-58
Let me comment on this. "Relativity", in the above context, splits into two logically independent pieces, i.e. the causal structure and the symmetry structure. The "retarded" causal structure is the axiom that no signals can propagate outside the forward light cone. In particular, this implies that it is impossible for advanced influences to propagate backward in time from future to past. Such advanced influences are part of both the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics by John Cramer and Yakir Aharonovs "two state vector" interpretation where the present is co-determined by both past and future influences. I use the word "influences" instead of "signals". All signals are influences but not vice versa. A signal has the additional property that it can be locally decoded at the receiver without needing additional bits from the sender. A superluminal signal can also be used to violate the classical limit of the second law of thermodynamics. Asher Peres showed this. Note I use the term "classical limit" because the second law of thermodynamics has surprising consequences in the quantum regime. For example, if you connect a hot negative temperature spin system to a cold positive temperature lattice, the resulting quantum reversible Carnot engine will totally convert random heat energy, from both hot and cold reservoirs, to coherent useful work. This is greater than 100% efficiency. The symmetry structure is that of the Lorentz transformations between inertial frames moving uniformly relative to each other at subluminal velocities. These subluminal frame shifts can consistently describe the motion of classical tachyon signals outside the light cone. It is, therefore, as shown by E.C.G. Sudarshan and the Gerald Feinberg, possible to have a limited or crippled form of special relativity with violation of retarded causality. Time dilation, the equivalence of mass to energy, and all other effects of special relativity tested by current experiments would still be valid in the crippled form. Dispersion relations that supposedly test retarded causality in strong interactions invariably have fudge factors and so the experiments cannot be trusted. Dispersion relations on light scattering from electrons are not relevant to the current problem. Bohm and Hiley explain, within their picture, why Eberhards theorem forbidding quantum superluminal signals works within the context of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm (EPR) experiment embodied in Bells locality inequality which was tested in Aspects Paris experiment:
"If there is a nonlocal connection between distant particles, what can we say about the possibility of using it to send signals from one of these particles to the other? Within the essentially statistical framework of the current quantum theory, this would require that there be something that we could do, for example to particle A which would change the statistical result of measurements of the spin of particle B in one or more directions. We shall show that this is, in fact, impossible, from which it follows that EPR correlations cannot make possible the transmission of signals of any kind (including, for example, those that are faster than light)." p. 139
Note that the Bohm theory is not epistemological like Bohrs and von Neumanns. Rather, it is ontological which implies that it is fundamentally non-statistical, though it can explain all of the tested quantum statistical results under the right conditions. Conventional quantum mechanics was designed to deal with ensembles of independent simple systems. Stuart Kauffman, on the other hand, is interested in the intrinsic self-organizing ability of individual complex adaptive systems called "IGUSs" by Murray Gell-Mann which is an acronym for "Information Gathering Utilization Systems". Bohms theory, being ontological, is ideally suited to describe the individual IGUS. New technology, like the scanning tunneling microscope, laser-cooling and magnetic traps, at the nanometer level and smaller, are making manipulations and observations of single quantum systems almost commonplace. Brian Josephson and co-workers have conjectured that living biological matter can utilize quantum nonlocality to send signals in a fundamentally new non-statistically-based way. This ontological loophole in quantum mechanics automatically has the spontaneous self-organization sought for by Kauffman. The key assumption required by Eberhard is that the statistical predictions of conventional or orthodox quantum mechanics are not violated. A necessary and sufficient condition for that is the conservation of probability current. This can be traced to the axiom of "unitarity". Bohm and Hiley continue:
"Let us suppose an external system with coordinate y is allowed to interact with the spin or particle A ... The most general possible result of this interaction will be represented by a unitary transformation on the sub-system consisting of y and A, because, by hypothesis, we are assuming that our interaction does not directly disturb B. If it did then this would not constitute sending a signal from A to B, but would just be a direct disturbance of B by its interaction with y ... Let us now consider spin averages for any spin ... for particle B. In the undisturbed state this average ... will be constituted of four terms, of which two may be called diagonal and the other two called off diagonal... A typical off diagonal terms will be ... zero ... It is well known that a unitary transformation will not change the scalar products. It follows then that because this transformation acts only on particle A, the diagonal terms remain the same as before and that the off diagonal terms remain zero. Therefore the average spin of particle B will be the same after transformation as before and we conclude then that nothing that we do to particle A will change the average spin properties of particle B." pp. 139-140
Even this is a very formal argument, but Bohm and Hiley, evolving from De Broglie and Einsteins intuitions, have a more intuitively visualizable description of all this which is not at all possible in the Stapp and Penrose "collapse" formulations that spin off from Bohrs and von-Neumanns. Thus:
"Of course, until we are able to carry out experiments on individual processes that are more accurate than the limits set by the uncertainty principle, it will not be possible to use quantum nonlocality for the purpose of sending signals. For as shown in chapter 7, in statistical measurements the EPR correlations between distant particles do not make it possible for signals to be sent from one particle to another." p. 282
Here is the important intuitive notion. The key word is "fragile":
"More generally any attempt to send a signal by influencing one of a pair of particles under EPR correlation will encounter difficulties from the irreducibly participatory nature of all quantum processes. If for example we tried to modulate the overall wave function so that it could carry a signal in a way similar to what is done by a radio wave, we would find that the whole pattern of this wave would be so fragile that its order could change radically in a chaotic anf complex way. As a result no signal could be carried." p. 284
This fragility of the ontological quantum wave attached to a single classical material system or "beable" can be directly traced to the "one-way" nature of orthodox quantum mechanics. "One-way´means that the quantum wave is the "unmoved mover" acting directly on its beable without the latter acting directly on it in a self-organizing way. It is this one-way action of Bohms quantum force, i.e. the negative gradient of the quantum potential Q, on its particle (beable) that is responsible for conservation of probability current and unitarity which is the basis of Eberhards theorem. Introduce post-quantum backactivity of direct action of the beable on its guiding quantum wave and we now have "a two-way relationship between wave and particle". This is a feedback-control loop between quantum wave and its attached classical many-particle system point in configuration space (or, alternatively and in addition to, gauge field configurations) which replaces the fragility with a robust self-organization upon which the random variation of Darwinian natural selection can operate. We still have to show why orthodox quantum mechanics works so well for all forms of inanimate matter including inanimate sub-levels of animate matter. For example, PET scans and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of living matter work wonderfully well and they only require orthodox quantum mechanics. I will return to this all-important issue used by Mulhauser et-al to debunk all theories of quantum mind.
Let's shift our attention back to Stuart Kauffmans brilliant book. Kauffman will be to the 21st Century what Darwin was to the 19th. Kauffmans work provides a data base of, at least indirect, biological evidence for post-quantum physics. If nonlocal post-quantum communication turns out to be a fact of nature, it also opens Pandoras box to paranormal phenomena like precognitive remote viewing and other effects now being studied at the PEAR Laboratory at Princeton University. It is the only way to reconcile alleged paranormal phenomena with the laws of physics IMHO. But, more importantly, nonlocal communication may turn out to be essential to understand the workings of ordinary mental processes in the single brain as well as telepathic connections between brains separated in both space and time. Furthermore, nonlocal communication would make ultra-fast quantum computing chips possible. These chips might even be capable of inner felt-experience if the post-quantum field of the microtubule infrastructure is the mind-field in the sense described by David Chalmers in the December 1995 Scientific American.
Kauffman points out that single-celled life evolved soon (about 550 million years) after the planet Earth formed about 4 billion years ago. Yet not much happened for the next 3 billion years until the Cambrian explosion only five hundred million years ago. He compares this explosion in the diversity and complexity of life to a kind of non-equilibrium "avalanche" instability i.e. "a natural phase transition in complex chemical systems" (p.48) not to any panspermia or to any intervention by advanced extra-terrestrial life forms, including time travelers from our relative future. The story of the Garden of Eden as well as other Bible tales obviously suggests such contact of our ancestors with advanced intelligence. The so-called "Bible Code" of equidistant letter sequences (ELS) also suggests this sci-fi scenario, though Michael Drosnins popular book on the alleged code has been rebuked by the scientists he cites as being too sensational. Therefore, we cannot accept Drosnins account uncritically at face value. However, we cannot reject the original data from the Torah entirely, but must keep an open mind awaiting news from serious scholars on what may prove to be evidence for contact with an advanced intelligence that has intervened in our historical evolution in strong violation of Star Fleets "Prime Directive".
"The existence of spontaneous order is a stunning challenge to our settled ideas in biology since Darwin. Most biologists have believed for over a century that selection is the sole source of order in biology, that selection alone is the tinkerer that crafts the forms. But if the forms selection chooses among were generated by laws of complexity, then selection has always had a handmaiden. It is not, after all, the sole source of order, and organisms are not just tinkered-together contraptions, but expressions of deeper natural laws. If all this is true, what a revision of the Darwinian worldview will lie before us! Not we the accidental, but we the expected." p. 8
I claim that the fundamental law of self-organizing complexity is to be found in the extension of quantum mechanics to post-quantum mechanics in which there is "a two-way relationship between wave and particle". Darwinian accidents correspond to the boundary conditions on the wave and the interaction Hamiltonian coupling the particle to its external, generally noisy, environment. Self-organization emerges when the direct backactivity of the particle (or system of charges and electro-weak fields) supplements the one-way relation of wave on particle on its guiding quantum pilot wave. The influence of this quantum wave is negligible in the classical limit. It is important to realize that the quantum pilot wave is qualitatively different from a classical sound wave in matter or a classical electromagnetic wave either in matter or in empty space. All classical waves propagate in familiar three-dimensional space, on the contrary, the quantum waves attached to these classical waves or to systems of several interacting elementary particles propagate in a higher-dimensional configuration space of these classical material "beables". Take a system of interacting particles separated from each other in ordinary space. The configuration of these particles is represented as a single "system point" in a higher-dimensional space. The quantum potential acts directly on the system point in this higher-dimensional configuration space. The level surfaces of constant quantum potential in configuration space form the kind of "fitness landscape" that is basic to Stuart Kauffmans paradigm. It is this action in higher-dimensional configuration space that is responsible for the quantum weirdness of matter in ordinary three-dimensional space. Therefore, configuration space is not simply a mental construct, but has an ontological basis as objective nonlocal quantum connections between localized classical beables separated in space and, as we shall see, even in time. Ordinary quantum mechanics corresponds to a quantum fitness landscape whose form does not depend upon the motion of the beable system point through it. Post-quantum mechanics, defined as the addition of backactivity, means that the fitness landscape depends directly upon the actual path of the beable system point. However, this motion also depends upon the slope or gradient of the quantum potential at the location of the system point. Therefore, we have a self-referential feedback control loop between quantum wave and classical beable, which is the fundamental physical mechanism for Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization".
"Now that my symbols have outelbowed space."
Dylan Thomas's "To-day, This Insect"
Kauffman gives a good popular explanation of the classical limit of the second law of thermodynamics which is worth citing because then we can compare it with the qualitatively different situation of system of particles with an entangled quantum wave function so that they all share a common quantum potential.
"In equilibrium systems -- those closed to the exchange of matter and energy with their environment -- a measure of disorder called entropy inevitably increases ... Consider a box filled with gas molecules, modeled as hard elastic spheres. All the molecules could be in a small corner of the box, or they could be spread out more or less uniformly. One arrangement is just as unlikely as any other. But a vastly larger number of the possible configurations correspond to situations in which the molecules are more or less uniformly distributed than to situations with all the molecules confined, say, to a single corner. Boltzmann argued that the increase in entropy in equilibrium systems arises from nothing more than the statistical tendency of the system to pass randomly through all possible arrangements (the so-called ergodic hypothesis). ... Left to itself, a system will visit all possible microscopic, fine-grained configurations equally often. But the system will spend most of its time in those coarse-grained patterns satisfied by very large numbers of fine-grained patterns -- molecules uniformly distributed throughout the box. So the second law is not so mysterious after all.
The consequence of the second law is that in equilibrium systems, order -- the most unlikely of the arrangements -- tends to disappear. If order is defined as those coarse-grained states that correspond to only a few fine-grained states ... then at thermodynamic equilibrium, those delicate arrangements disappear because of the ergodic wandering of the system through all its microstates. It follows that the maintenance of order requires that some form of work be done on the system. In the absence of work, order disappears. Hence we come to our current sense that an incoherent collapse of order is the natural state of things. Again, we the accidental, we the unexpected." pp. 9-10
Kauffmans book explains what is wrong with the above picture. The equilibrium statistical mechanics, whether classical or quantum, and kinetic theory of closed thermodynamics is not the right tool:
"All living systems eat: they take in matter and energy in order to reproduce themselves. This means that they are ... open thermodynamic systems. In contrast, closed thermodynamic systems take in no matter or energy from their environments. A great deal is understood about the behavior of closed thermodynamic systems. The theorists of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics have studied such systems for over 100 years. In contrast, remarkably little is understood about the possible behaviors of open thermodynamic systems. Not so surprising this ignorance. The vast flowering of all life-forms over the past 3.45 billion years is merely a hint of the possible behaviors of open thermodynamic systems." p. 50
Note that Kauffman only includes "matter and energy" as "food". He leaves out "information". This is because he is really thinking classically and not quantum mechanically. In Bohms version of quantum mechanics there is an actual disembodied field of "active information" for a single "pure" quantum state that is qualitatively different from the classical "passive" Shannon information of "impure" mixtures of quantum states. It is the passive Shannon information, which is tied to matter and energy in Kauffmans sense. Bohms "active information" is essentially the information field called for by David Chalmers in his December, 1995 Scientific American article on consciousness as a physical phenomenon. How active quantum information transforms to classical Shannon information and vice versa is an important topic on which research is only now beginning.
Nonlocality is not the only profoundly new idea that Bohm introduces into quantum mechanics. "Form-dependence" is another new related idea. Bohm and Hiley wrote:
"... the quantum potential Q is not changed when we multiply the field psi by an arbitrary constant. (This is because psi appears in both the numerator and the denominator of Q.) This means that the effect of the quantum potential is independent of the strength (i.e. the intensity) of the quantum field but depends only on its form. By contrast, classical waves, which act mechanically (i.e. to transfer energy and momentum, for example, to push a floating object), always produce effects which are more or less proportional to the strength of the wave. For example one may consider a water wave which causes a cork to bob. The further the cork is from the center of the wave the less it will move. But with the quantum field, it is as if the cork could bob with full strength even far from the source of the wave. The quantum field of active information may be compared to "a ship on automatic pilot being guided by radio waves. Here, too, the effect of the radio waves is independent of their intensity and depends only on their form. The essential point is that the ship is moving with its own energy, and that the form of the radio waves is taken up to direct the much greater energy of the ship. We may therefore propose that an electron too moves under its own energy, and that the form of the quantum wave directs the energy of the electron. pp 31-32
In this explanation of the quantum properties of the electron, the fact that the quantum potential depends only on the form and not on the amplitude of the quantum field is evidently of crucial significance. ... Effects of this kind are indeed frequently encountered in ordinary experience wherever we are dealing with information. ... we have in this way introduced a concept that is new in the context of physics -- a concept that we shall call active information. The basic idea of active information is that a form having very little energy enters into and directs a much greater energy. The activity of the latter is in this way given a form similar to that of the smaller energy.
It is important to distinguish our concept of active information from the more technical definition of information commonly adopted in physics in terms of, for example, Shannons ideas implying that there is a quantitative measure of information that represents the way in which the state of a system is uncertain to us (e.g. that we can only specify probabilities of various states). ... we wish to propose here a quite different notion of information that is not essentially related to our own knowledge or lack of it. Rather in the case that we are discussing, for example, it will be information that is relevant to determining the movement of the electron itself. ... the information held by human beings is, in general, active rather than passive, not merely reflecting something outside itself but actually, or at least potentially, capable of participating in the thing to which it refers. Passive information may in fact be regarded as a limiting case in which we abstract from the activity of information. This is essentially the kind of information that is currently used in information theory, e.g. as used by Shannon. The puzzle in this approach is that of how information that is merely passive within us is able to determine actual objective processes outside of us." p. 37
Seen this way, it is natural to suppose that the mind is a nonlocal quantum field of Bohms active information of relatively tiny energy, which directs and coordinates the much larger metabolic energies of an autocatalytic network of organic molecules. We now have a clear physical picture of how thought, as Chalmerss physical information field, acts on matter. It only requires the additional post-quantum backactivity of matter back on thought to close the feedback-control circuit required for Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" that is the constant "handmaiden" imposing a robust order on the random variations of Darwinian natural selection. Professor Bader has a very useful new way of doing practical calculations of molecular structures, stability and reactivity in quantum chemistry, which is formally quite close to using Bohms quantum potential.
Bohm and Hiley continue:
"This introduces several new features into the movement. First of all, it means that particles moving in empty space under the action of no classical forces need not travel uniformly in straight lines. This is a radical departure from classical Newtonian theory. Moreover, since the effect of the wave does not necessarily fall off with the distance, even remote features of the environment can profoundly affect the particle." p. 32
You will note that Kauffmans above intuitive discussion of the second law of thermodynamics assumes Newtonian mechanics. What happens if all the particles in the box share a common giant quantum potential? The ergodic theorem can be expected to fail. This means that if work is done to prepare the set of particles in a highly improbable state, the time it takes to approach thermal equilibrium may be very different from what one would get classically. The subject of equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics for the final most probable states of identical particles with no classical forces between them is simple. For example, if the identical particles have quantum spin ½ like electrons, protons and neutrons do, then their common giant quantum wavefunction is totally antisymmetric under exchange of any two particles. "Antisymmetric" here means that the wave function gets multiplied by the factor -1 when the two identical particles change places with each other. This is a non-classical discrete nonlocal permutation group symmetry described by "Young patterns". These discrete patterns in Hilbert space have a profound influence on the quantum patterns of active information that image the continuous groups that generate space-time geometry according to Felix Klein's "Erlanger Program". The math shows that the resulting many-particle quantum potential has infinitely large repulsive quantum forces between any two particles that try to occupy the same place at the same time, even if there are no classical forces. This is the Pauli exclusion principle, which is responsible for all sub-nuclear, nuclear, atomic and solid-state structure. It also plays a vital role in the formation of the chemical bonds that glue atoms into molecules. Furthermore, as the temperature of the electrons is lowered in thermal equilibrium to the solid state, a "Fermi surface" forms in momentum space. The shape of the Fermi surface of electrons in solids has profound affects on the properties of those solids. In contrast, if we have many particles of quantum spin 1 like massless photons (quanta of light) and a massive Helium 4 atom, with two protons and two neutrons in the tiny nucleus and two electrons, for example, the wave function is symmetric. That is, the wave function does not change under exchange of a pair of identical particles. The result is that the giant quantum potential exerts attractive forces on the identical particles as they get closer together. This attraction was first noticed by Einstein and is seen as "photon bunching" in quantum optics effects like Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) intensity interferometry. HBT is a good way to measure the angular size of stars through the turbulent atmosphere. A new effect happens for massive particles like Helium 4 atoms. Since they are conserved in number at low temperature, one gets a "Bose-Einstein condensation" of the identical Helium atoms into the same state of motion. When one puts in the classical forces between the atoms, we get a quantum liquid or superfluid, which is able to flow without friction through narrow tubes below a critical speed. Another Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms using laser cooling has recently been demonstrated experimentally. This opens the door to "matter wave lasers" that will have practical application in the manufacture of computer chips. Therefore, the effects of giant quantum potentials are profound. The well-known examples I gave above, so far, use only quantum mechanics with no post-quantum backactivity. It is backactivity that I suspect is also relevant to the problem of making a practical warp drive for star travel, and I have no doubt that it is essential to Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" in autocatalytic molecular networks held far from thermal equilibrium. Kauffmans picture is still too classical. For one thing it leaves out the fact that living matter has an "inner feel". This problem of "inner feel", or "qualia", is discussed in detail in Henry Stapps book, Matter, Mind and Quantum Mechanics. Stapp does not use Bohms picture, but he comes up with a coarser-grained approximation to it based on extending Heisenbergs epistemological picture of "potentia" collapsing to "actua" to an ontology of what is really "out there" independent of our knowledge. I should say more about my off-hand remark about "warp drive" above. In their discussion of how a tiny active information organizes a much larger energy, Bohm and Hiley remark
"the vacuum is generally regarded as full with an immense energy of fluctuation, revealed for example in the Casimir effect, it may be further suggested that ultimately the energy of this particle comes from this source." p. 38
"Igor, its alive!"
Mel Brooks, Frankenstein
Kauffman writes on the origin of life:
"Most of my colleagues believe that life emerged simple and became complex. They picture nude RNA molecules replicating and replicating and eventually stumbling on and assembling all the complicated chemical machinery we find in a living cell. Most of my colleagues also believe that life is uterly dependent on the molecular logic of template replication, the A-T, G-C Watson-Crick pairing ... I hold a renegade view: life is not shackled to the magic of template replication, but based on a deeper logic." p. 47
Yes, the deeper self-organizing logic of post-quantum backactivity making "a two-way relationship between wave and particle".
"I hope to persuade you that life is a natural property of complex chemical systems, that when the number of different kinds of molecules in a chemical soup passes a certain threshold, a self-sustaining network of reactions -- an autocatalytic metabolism will suddenly appear. Life emerge, I suggest, no simple, but complex and whole, and has remained complex and whole ever since -- not because of a mysterious elan vital, but thanks to the simple, profound transformation of dead molecules into an organization by which each molecules formation is catalyzed by some other molecule in the organization. The secret of life, the wellspring of reproduction, is not to be found in the beauty of Watson-Crick pairing, but in the achievement of collective catalytic closure." p. 48
I would not be so quick to reject Henri Bergsons "elan vital". It is not at all "mysterious", but corresponds to the Bohm quantum potential Q. Let us see what Bohm means by "whole" which is crucial to implementing Kauffmans visionary idea in terms of an objective, though non-classical mechanical, but still physical, natural "post-quantum" robust self-organizing process. Bohm and Hiley wrote:
"The relationship between parts of a system described above implies a new quality of wholeness of the entire system going beyond anything that can be specified solely in terms of the actual spatial relationships of all the particles. This is indeed the feature, which makes the quantum theory go beyond mechanism of any kind. For it is the essence of mechanism to say that basic reality consists of the parts of a system which are in a preassigned interaction. The concept of the whole, then, has only a secondary significance, in the sense that it is only a way of looking at certain overall aspects of what is in reality the behavior of the parts. In our interpretation of the quantum theory, we see that the interaction of parts is determined by something that cannot be described solely in terms of these parts and their preassigned interrelationships. Rather it depends on the many-body wave function (which, in the usual interpretation, is said to determine the quantum state of the system ... Something with this kind of dynamical significance that refers directly to the whole system is thus playing a key role in the theory. We emphasize that this is the most fundamentally new aspect of the quantum theory." p.p. 58-59
Kauffman points out that all the major mass-energy systems in the universe are open. They are in an essentially permanent non-equilibrium because of the cosmological expansion of the universe. This expansion of three-dimensional space provides the work required preventing the universal heat death, which was mistakenly thought to be our final fate in the old physics. Lee Smolins The Life of the Cosmos is a good reference for the latest information on this subject.
"... the evolving universe since the Big Bang has yielded the formation of galactic and supragalactic structures on enormous scales. These stellar structures and the nuclear processes within stars, which have generated the atoms and molecules from which life itself arose, are open systems, driven by nonequilibrium processes in the unfolding universe. We are all -- complex atoms, Jupiter, spiral galaxies, warthog, and frog -- the logical progeny of that creative power."
That "creative power" is at least partly in Einsteins classical field equations of the mutable space-time geometry which both guides the motion of mass-energy densities and flows, while also being warped by them. This is a classical feedback-control loop analogous to, but with essential differences from, the new post-quantum feedback-control loop. Both the classical and post-quantum loops give rise to spontaneous self-organization in Kauffmans sense, but only the post-quantum loops are "alive" with inner-felt experiences. This is the essential difference between inanimate and animate matter. The experimental test for the post-quantum hypothesis will be a post-quantum computing chip i.e. "PQ-chip" emulating the human microtubule infrastructure which, when activated, with suitable I/O devices and sensors, will claim that it is conscious after it is taught language.
Kauffman wrote:
"I hold that life, at its root, does not depend on the magic of Watson-Crick base pairing or any other specific template-replicating machinery. Life at its root, lies in the property of catalytic closure among a collection of molecular species. Alone each molecular species is dead. Jointly, once catalytic closure among them is achieved, the collective system of molecules is alive." p.50 Catalytic closure ensures that the whole exists by means of the parts ... Autocatalytic sets exhibit the emergent power of holism." p.69
Kauffman is not aware of Bohms implicate objective wholeness. The incompleteness in Kauffmans theory is that he is restricted to the explicate emergence of classical mechanism where all influences are by signals propagating in space. This will become clearer below when we discuss Kauffmans computer simulations of Boolean networks near phase transitions "on the edge of chaos." While Kauffman's classical mechanisms are necessary, they are not sufficient to explain life's inner feel or "sentience". To the extent that the catalytic closure can be completely described by classical rate equations, or by coupled density matrix rate equations in the random phase approximation with no off-diagonal-long-range-order (ODLRO), the system will not be fully "alive" in the sense of having the potential for inner-felt experience. This potential is actualized by post-quantum backactivity when thermal noise is sufficiently screened out of the specific subsystem that forms the "Eccles gates" connecting the mental quantum potential to its material system point. The coherent quantum potential forms a fitness landscape for the motion of the system point. The self-organizing fitness landscape changes, i.e. adapts, with the motion of the system point that it is partly determining. This is the feedback-control loop. In addition, the external environment, i.e. Darwinian natural selection, is simultaneously providing input pumping to the mind-matter system. The mind and the immune system both require a kind of non-equilibrium biological superconductivity whose macroscopic quantum coherence is more like that of a laser than that of superfluid helium at thermal equilibrium. Frohlich came up with this sort of mechanism. It is the macroscopic quantum coherence, which provides the "common pool of information" for global coordination of all living matter. This global coordination via the giant quantum potential has inner-felt experience of qualia as an intrinsic property in the theory I am proposing. To see this more intuitively, let us see how Bohm and Hiley describe active information in complex systems in general and in superconductors in particular.
"The wave function is defined in the configuration space of all the particles." p.60
The "fitness landscape", a primary concept in Kauffmans theory of spontaneous self-organization (that will be discussed in detail below), is determined by the giant coherent quantum potential of the complex adaptive system in this configuration space. Note that the term "particles" can be extended to include electromagnetic field distributions over the entire space of the living organism at a fixed moment of time. The configuration space is then infinite dimensional and the quantum potential becomes a "super quantum potential". Do not confound the configuration space with the Hilbert space. The latter is the range of the wave function, the former is its domain in the sense the theory of functions used in elementary calculus, for example. Relativistic considerations play a negligible role in this aspect of biophysics.
"Its effect on the particles is determined by the phase S and the quantum potential Q, both of which depend only on the form of the wave function and not on its amplitude ... we may therefore regard the wavefunction as containing active information. But this information is ordered in configuration space rather than in the ordinary space of three dimensions. ... consider its implications for the motions of the particles. These now respond in a correlated way to what is, in effect, a common pool of information. This information guides the particles ... Different linear combinations of the wave functions will give rise to different pools of information, which in turn will give rise to corresponding differences in the behavior of the system." p. 60
Bohms notion of the "common pool of information" is obviously how all living matter is so wonderfully globally coordinated with inner-felt experience. The simple "explicate" transmission of nerve signals, and the transport of chemical messengers, both classical processes in the ordinary space of three dimensions, while necessary, but not sufficient to explain life. Therefore, Kauffmans instant phase transition leading to "catalytic closure", while crucial to the story of life, is not its end. The end of the story is Bohms "implicate" common pool of quantum information supplemented by post-quantum backactivity from the position of the actual system point of the individual complex adaptive system to its guiding fitness landscape set up by the quantum potential. There is always an additional stochastic input from the external environment's classical signals causing the system point to jiggle away from its coherent quantum motion. This is how Darwinian natural selection causes mutations with dramatic self-organized critical phase transitions that dramatically morph the quantum mind's fitness landscape. The "Aha! Eureka, I found it!" peak experience of Abraham Maslow's model is a good example of such a phase transition in a sub-space of the total configuration space of the living material body. The fitness landscape globally coordinates the immune system as well. This explains psychosomatic phenomena, e.g. Bill Moyers's recent book and TV series.
"When the wave function is factorized into independent products, this will correspond to having independent pools of information. There is therefore an objective difference between systems, which are wholes guided by a pool of common information and systems constituted of independent parts guided by separate pools of information. We may contrast this possibility of objective wholeness with what happens in classical mechanics, in which the notion of a whole is a subjective convenience for describing the behavior of what are in reality a set of independently existing parts in interaction."
A world of caution about the popular term "emergent properties" that Kauffman and others use. What they have in mind is really what Bohm and Hiley call the explicate "subjective wholeness" of classical mechanistic reductionism which really throws the baby out with the bath water when it comes to understanding the physics of living matter. Catalytic closure will lead to emergent properties in this subjective mechanistic way, but unless it is accompanied by implicate objective wholeness, the system will not be "alive" in the fullest sense. There is a big difference, in Bohms theory, between the emergence of a vortex in water, or a tornado in the atmosphere, and the objective wholeness of a living organism. Henry Stapp has also made this crucial distinction using his ontological Heisenberg-James model rather than Bohms.
"The fact that the wave function is in configuration space clearly prevents us from regarding the quantum field as one that carries energy and momentum that was simply transferred to the particles with which it interacted (thus effectively pushing or pulling mechanically on the latter). This is a further factor in addition to the form dependence if the activity if the field which leads us to consider the interpretation of this field as active information. The multidimensional nature of this field need not then be so mysterious, since information can be organized into as many sets of dimension as needed. ... the energy and momentum are not coming from the quantum field. Rather [separated parts of the system are] informed to respond in a correlated way by the pool of information common [to them]." p.61
Here for the first time in the history of the mind-matter problem (e.g. see Stapps Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics for historical background) do we see clearly the physics of how the mind ("ghost" or "elan vital") influences its attached matter ("flesh). Be clear that what we now mean by "ghost", "elan vital", "mind" is not some supernatural or mystical entity beyond rational science, but is, rather, an objective physical field that is beyond space and time but which globally coordinates the correlated motion of extended complex adaptive living systems. Bohm and Hiley, in 4.3 show how the objective wholeness of common pools of quantum information explains the chemical bond in a much clearer intuitively visualizable manner than the conventional formal approach based on Bohrs Copenhagen interpretation.
"In terms of the usual interpretation of quantum theory, we have no intuitive notion of the difference between the ... [bonding and anti-bonding] states, nor indeed what it means to form a linear combination of states. Yet it is just this which is responsible for a vast range of chemical properties. In our interpretation these properties are understood through the notion that the wavefunction of a molecule constitutes a common pool of information that guides the activity of all its particles in related ways... Different wave functions, constituting different pools of information, will then give rise to well-defined differences in the behavior of the system." p. 65
This notion of objective quantum wholeness is, to a certain degree, scale invariant. It will also apply to Kauffmans autocatalytic networks of molecules. The different separated molecules in the autocatalytic network above the critical complexity threshold, described by Kauffman, will have control-electron subsystems, which, under suitable conditions of protection against thermal noise, share a common pool of information. As I already mentioned, but it's worth repeating in the Age of HIV, a good example of this is our immune system.
"Physics has already developed in such a way that the classical potential V, can be regarded as an actual existent field distributed throughout three dimensional space. This field can be regarded as the source of the change of information with time brought about by V in the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. It obeys a wave equation implying the detailed conservation of energy and momentum. Therefore, we can, if we wish, attribute the energy and momentum to the field and thus imagine it is flowing throughout space and into and out of the particle. But as we have seen, this picture could not be coherently applied to the quantum potential. ... the picture of a continuously conserved flow of energy and momentum will not also apply except as a limiting case holding only in the classical approximation." p.62
The above distinction is crucial to the quest of the NASA "Breakthrough Propulsion Group" to develop a propellant free-drive for space flight. Any practical successful warp drive will have find a way to make a giant, but controllable, super-post-quantum potential attached to small regions (nanometer or smaller) of the classical space-time metric. Post-quantum backactivity is essential for the control of this drive with the feeble classical electromagnetic fields and their super-quantum potentials that are available to us. These feeble fields must trigger inflationary phase-transitions in the metric that quickly saturate. The problem is analogous to putting control rods in a nuclear fission reactor.
"Superfluidity and superconductivity provide a very good illustration of how a common pool of information can give rise to strikingly new properties of a many-body system. ... at low temperature many substances can go into a new state in which currents (either of atoms or electrons) can flow indefinitely without viscosity or resistance. This state is stable only up to a certain temperature at which the property disappears. ... What is essential here is that the helium nuclei are bosons and that the electron pairs that are responsible for superconductivity are also effectively bosons." pp65-66
Note that this is a thermal equilibrium system, but Frohlich has shown how an analogous effect of Bose-Einstein condensation of electric dipole vibrations can occur in a thermodynamically open biological membrane that is pumped far from equilibrium. The metabolic pumping rate plays the role of an inverse absolute temperature, so that a high pump rate corresponds to a low effective temperature for the open dissipative structure.
"Clearly no matter what the detailed structure ... the understanding of superflow depends basically on ... why the particles move stably together with a common velocity ... we shall have to show how the quantum potential ... actually constitutes active information that keeps all the particles moving together in spite of perturbations that would otherwise scatter them." p. 68
Now we see the awesome power of Bohms intuitive genius, which in this case even surpasses the great Feynman who never said it so clearly in his papers on the subject. It is interesting that Feynman was a great friend to Bohm and vehemently defended him to his establishment detractors as described in David Peats biography of Bohm, Infinite Potential.
" In ordinary scattering processes, the energy conservation condition between initial and final states can be satisfied and we get a real transition into a scattered wave. In the case of a superfluid however energy conservation cannot be satisfied so we get only virtual contributions to the wave function. If we evaluated the quantum potential, it would be seen that these latter contributions imply an additional force on the particle which accounts for why it is first accelerated away from the obstacle and then brought back to its original velocity. Since every particle will behave in essentially the same way [due to the total permutation symmetry of the many-boson wave function] it follows that the liquid as a whole will flow around the obstacle and then reconstitute its flow in its original direction. This is basically our intuitive explanation of why the state of superflow is stable. This is evidently a purely quantum mechanical response of the whole system. It involves not only nonlocal interactions due to the quantum potential, but also the irreducible quantum wholeness implied by the fact that this interaction cannot be expressed in terms of a pre-assigned function of the particle coordinates. p. 70 One can say that in the state of superflow, this [common pool of] information brings about a coordinated movement of all the particles that can be thought of as resembling a ballet dance (in which all the dancers separate in a systematic way to go round an obstacle and then reform their original pattern." p. 71
We now come to a quote that is crucial to the completing of Kauffmans program to supplement Darwinian natural selection with an even more fundamental spontaneous self-organizational physical process.
"This means that the guidance condition and the quantum potential implied by it can, under certain conditions, have the novel quality of being able to organize the activity of an entire set of particles, in a way that depends on a pool of information common to the whole set. This behavior is reminiscent of what is found in living beings which are similarly organized by a common pool of information ..." p. 71
This illustrates the essential physical difference between explicate "emergent properties" and implicate objective wholeness. So far, there is no role for post-quantum backactivity in the above beautiful explanation of superfluid flow. What would a post-quantum superfluid with backactivity be like? It is not enough in the new biophysics to rely only on the classically mechanistic notion of "emergence" of a collective mode out of only pre-assigned interactions. We also see how the breakdown in local conservation of energy and momentum flows in ordinary three-dimensional space implied by the action of the quantum potential results in new quantum forces from virtual processes. This is a clue for how to make a practical propellant-free drive for spacecraft.
Many Worlds?
Is there a "universe next door"? If so, how do we open the door?
Bohm and Hiley give a critical analysis of the several variations on the theme of non-Bohmian, but still ontological, "many worlds", or "parallel universes", as a way to understand the meaning of quantum mechanics. They point out a deep conceptual split between Everetts original theory which is more like "many-minds" in a single material universe, and DeWitts later theory which is one of "splitting" material universes. At the very outset in this discussion we need to clarify the difference of the many-worlds theories of quantum mechanics and the "chaotic inflation" theories. The latter has "baby universes" that split off from our universe exploding out of the quantum foam of metric fluctuations at the Planck scale of 10-33 cm or 1028 ev. The difference is that the many-worlds theories deal with the splitting of the quantum wave function into ""branches" or "channels" which are complex-valued functions with ranges in Hilbert space and domains in the configuration space, which in quantum gravity is the Wheeler superspace. In contrast, baby universes, as described, for example, in Lee Smolins The Life of the Cosmos, are parts of a multiply connected 3-geometry with detached pieces that split off from the original. For example, a single point in Wheeler superspace would be a 3-geometry with wormholes as well as detached pieces that represented the baby universes. The different points of the superspace are a bit like DeWitts alternate "splitting universes" that are "next door". But, in contrast, each branch of the wavefunction of the universe has values on every separate point in Wheeler superspace. The bottom line is that there are serious problems of internal self-inconsistencies in every version of "many-worlds". They certainly do not deliver what they promise. Hawkings quantum cosmology assumes a many-worlds interpretation which could be its Achilles Heel.
"there is no single generally accepted version of the many-worlds interpretation. .... Everett and DeWitt differ significantly ... p. 296 Everetts approach to the many-worlds interpretation ... emphasizes the inclusion of observers as purely physical systems within the theory." p.297
This is a good feature of it since my post-quantum extension of Bohms theory does the same thing. In this sense there is a denial of traditional Cartesian mind-matter dualism in which mind is beyond the physical. But there is an ontological physical dualism since the mind field i.e. quantum potential, has important qualitative differences from classical fields and sources which are the "beables".
"Everett ... assumes that the universe as a whole including all observers exists objectively and is described completely by a vector in Hilbert space." p. 297
Like Bohrs epistemological "Copenhagen interpretation", which says there is no objective space-time picture of individual processes possible, Everett throws out the "beables" which are not the same as the "hidden variables" of the Vigier "sub-quantum domain". This distinction is often not made in popular accounts such as Stengers book The Unconscious Quantum.
"he wants to attribute subjective states to the observers which are in perfect correspondence with some aspects of the material universe and therefore of Hilbert space. This sort of idea has been widely called psycho-physical parallelism ... memories are contained in ... some aspect of the physical state of the observer ... Deductions can then in principle be made about the subjective experience of the observer by examining the contents of the memory." p. 297
This is not the same as the post-quantum field of active information, which, in the presence of backactivity, becomes the actual field of inner-felt experiences.
"Everett proposes that we can extend this model of an observer by considering him to behave like an automatic machine possessing sensory apparatus couple to registering devices capable of recording past sensory data as well as machine configurations. He further supposes that the present actions of the machine are determined not only by its present sensory data, but by the content of its memory as well." p.297
I would add advanced information from the relative future of the present moment of the living bio-machine because of the nonunitary nature of post-quantum mechanics. The level of reliability of the alleged, highly controversial, advanced "precognitive remote-viewing" information is, for most people, very much less than that of retarded information from past memories except for the short-time Libet effect that Fred Alan Wolf is currently writing a paper on for the rapidly-approaching Vigier Conference (August 23-29, 1997, York University, Toronto).
Remember the initial motivation of many-worlds is to only use the linear unitarily-evolving Schrodinger equation (or relativistic generalizations) without any non-unitary nonlinear collapse its solutions in a measurement. This is a promise that is not kept in any variation on the many-worlds themes. In other words, objections to Bohms theory on the basis of "extra assumptions" apply also to all forms of the many-worlds approaches. Bohms theory has the key advantage that it is manifestly self-consistent. Let us recall that "unitary-evolution" means conservation of quantum probability current in the configuration space of the many-particle/classical electro-weak-strong-gravity field complex extended system which is the "beable". Post-quantum mechanics with backactivity feedback-control loops between the quantum "active information" pattern and its attached "beable" is a fundamental mechanism for "spontaneous self-organization" and is essentially non-unitary. The lack of conservation of quantum probability current is the measure of creative novelty in the sentient post-quantum system. It also evades Eberhards theorem and allows "nonlocal communication" in the sense defined by Stenger in The Unconscious Quantum. Eberhards theorem was the quantum barrier against paranormal effects like precognitive remote viewing. This quantum barrier has been breached. According to Roger Penroses hypothesis, any post-quantum gravity system with "orchestrated self-collapse" has "inner feel" as described by Stapp. Penroses orchestrated self-collapse is a less precise way of describing spontaneous self-organization as a feedback-control loop in post-Bohmian terms.
"It is clear therefore that if we add no further concepts to the quantum theory (e.g. such as well-defined particle positions as we have done and if we do not allow collapse) then there is no way in what Everett has said thus far, to describe the fact that a definite result is actually obtained in each case." p.298 In order to avoid the need for bringing about a definite result for the measurement by means of a collapse of the wave function ... Everett assumes that each part of this wavefunction corresponds to a definite state of awareness of the content of the observers memory." ibid.
This is why Everetts original many-worlds theory is really a "many-minds" theory with no material splitting of the actual universe such as does happen in the creation of "baby universes" in Hawkings quantum gravity. Hawkings theory does not have a different branch of the wave function for each baby universe. In general each branch of the quantum wave function of the universe can describe all the baby universes as well as the mother universe. They all form a giant beable of pieces of classical space geometry with lapse and shift functions if we use the ADM formalism.
"... in a series of measurements, the number of partial awarenesses must multiply indefinitely" p.299
Note that in Stapps version of ontological post-quantum mechanics there is an objective collapse to a single actual awareness. My backactivity model can be made to agree with Stapps model. The idea is that each branch of the quantum inner information pattern corresponds to a definite basin of attraction for beable paths in configuration space. The quantum potential sets up these attractors which form a "fitness landscape". Backactivity means that the landscape itself is sensitive to the single actual path that the beable is on. This actual path is partially determined by the slope of the quantum potential as well as by external forces from the environment. Random noise is filtered out along the lines suggested by Hameroff and Penrose e.g. Shadows of the Mind. The effect of the combination of backactivity with the Bohm force, acting oppositely to form a "two-way" feedback-control loop, is an objective non-unitary collapse of all basins except the one actually occupied by the brain-configuration beable. This lone surviving attractor is morphing in the feedback loop so that the simple determinism in Bohms version of orthodox quantum mechanics is transcended. This process is "non-algorithmic" in Penroses sense. It is why we have free will. Free-will is post-quantum spontaneous self-organization.
" He [Everett] assumes that one of these branches represents the experience of a particular person. The other branches do not represent merely possible experiences that this person might have had (as they would, for example, in a corresponding treatment in terms of our own interpretation). Rather they represent distinctly different sequences of experiments which are actually recorded in other awarenesses... all these different sequences of awarenesses are not aware of each other, not of the whole." p.299
David Albert in his book, Quantum Mechanics of Experience, in the final chapter, has an extension of Everett in which the different sequences of awarenesses, under special conditions of self-measurement, are aware of each other via "photographs of other worlds".
"as Squires has put it, what we are dealing with is not a many-universe theory, but a theory of one universe with many viewpoints. ... a relative state of the system corresponding to a particular state of the observer (or more accurately, to the state of his awareness)." ibid.
Everetts theory would seem to be more useful as a psychological theory dealing with "multiple personality disorder" except for the condition that all observers have consistent consensus reality memory records in each branch.
"It is implicit in Everetts approach .... that the main purpose of this interpretation is to introduce the minimum number of concepts into the theory (for example, Everett would regard our notion of particle variables as further assumptions that are not needed)." p.300
So would Bohr, von Neumann, Wheeler et-al in their epistemological variations on the "Copenhagen interpretation". In other words, these interpretations do not use "beables". Bohm and Hiley point to a fundamental inconsistency in Everetts idea that violates the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
"there is a further speculative hypothesis of a more physical nature. This is that it is possible to put some quality, such as awareness, into a precise and accurate correspondence with some part or component of the total vector in Hilbert space. ... memory would be determined by an eigenvector of a memory operator .... But Everett is further assuming that there is a property called awareness (which he regards as essentially physical) that can be put into accurate correspondence with some part of the total Hilbert space vector, even when the latter is not an eigenvector of the memory. If a similar statement were made about an ordinary physical quantity, this would imply a violation of the uncertainty principle. Or to put it differently, Everett is assuming that the mind can be aware of its own state of memory without measuring the latter, therefore, without disturbing the latter, and hence without introducing any ambiguity. It is clear then that Everett has assumed a kind of property going far beyond what is allowed in ordinary quantum mechanics." p.301
Bohm and Hiley then deal with DeWitts "splitting universes" based upon Gell-Manns idea of "complexity". Most popular treatments of this do not make the crucial distinctions between Everetts and DeWitts ideas on "many-worlds". DeWitt was trying to rid quantum mechanics of "metaphysics". He did not succeed. Bohm and Hiley describe DeWitts motivation as:
"1. To take the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics as it stands without adding anything to it.
2. To deny the existence of a separate classical reality.
3. To assert that the state vector never collapses.
.... He then says that only one additional postulate is needed to give meaning to the mathematics, namely the postulate of complexity: The world must be sufficiently complicated that it can be decomposed into systems and apparatuses. From this it follows that the mathematical formalism of the quantum theory is capable of yielding its own interpretation (and all this without external metaphysics or mathematics)." p.302
The problem is that DeWitt does not give a clear definition of "complexity". Perhaps Gell-Manns will do? DeWitt appears to be indulging in what Feynman described as a "Cargo-Cult" imitation of Godels incompleteness theorem which also uses a complexity threshold for a formal system to derive "self-reference" statement which is true but unprovable within the system. That is, formal systems of sufficient complexity cannot be both consistent and complete.
"DeWitt then asserts that the universe itself is splitting into a stupendous number of branches, all resulting from the measurement-like interactions between its myriads of components." p.302
Again this is not to be confused with Hawkings topological splitting off of baby universes in inflating quantum foam fluctuations of the metric tensor. The Hawking process does not require the von-Neumann type interaction Hamiltonian the way DeWitts model does.
"There is no mention of splitting universes in Everetts work. Rather there is one universe with many awarenesses that are not aware of each other ... Everett also says that no very significant change takes place when an observer becomes aware of a certain result. It is not the universe which splits, but it is just awareness as a whole that divides into many parts that are not aware of each other ... Everetts aim is thus not mainly to explain the universe, but rather to explain our perceptions of the universe. ... there is a fundamental difference between the basic assumptions held by the two leading protagonists of the many-worlds approach." p.303
"DeWitts theory is purely objective, while Everetts theory depends crucially on the inclusion of the subjective experiences of the observer. ... For DeWitt, the universe actually splits as might happen to material objects. This assumption contains a number of problems. Firstly we can ask just when does it split. ... What would be required for an adequate formulation of DeWitts approach ... would be to come with a good quantitative definition of complexity ... But if he were to succeed in doing this he would clearly have introduced new concepts as well as new equations, and could not hope to claim that the mathematics of the current quantum theory determines its own interpretation."
Therefore, DeWitt has made exaggerated claims i.e., the universe splits, as wild as any paranormal claim, which do not survive critical analysis, yet one does not see the Committee to Investigate the Claims of the Paranormal, denounce DeWitt as a Cargo Cultist doing pseudoscience. :-) Of course, all good theoretical physicists, and DeWitt is a good one, like to play and speculate. It is a legitimate part of the process of physics and it is absolutely essential.
Still another deep defect in all versions of many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics is the idea of probability. The argument for probability is circular.
"If we claim that the whole universe is completely described by a certain vector in Hilbert space, then this is unique and does not allow for a statistical theory (based for example on an ensemble of similar universes) ... Everett and DeWitt adopt what is basically the same idea. They consider a long sequence of N measurements on similar systems initially in the same quantum state. Their aim is then to prove, without any extraneous assumptions about probability, that as N -> infinity the relative frequency of a given result will be equal to the usual quantum mechanical probability."p.305
"Everett and DeWitt begin by assuming a measure associated with each vector in Hilbert space which is equal to the quantum mechanical probability that is usually associated with that branch of the wave function in standard quantum theory. ... They then sow that in an infinite sequence of measurements the measure of the branches in which the proportion [differs from the standard Born rule] is zero. As yet, however, nothing follows from this about actual relative frequencies. To make a connection they have to introduce a further assumption. This is essentially that branches of measure zero never occur. .... There is no intrinsic reason why branches of measure zero should never occur, if measure is nothing more than a purely abstract mathematical quantity. ... The treatment of Everett and DeWitt would in any case apply only to an infinite sequence of measurements, but the theory must apply to finite sequences that can be carried out in actual experiments. Indeed, current probability theory implies that finite sequences of small measure must occur sometimes if the distribution is random." p.307
Still more damning is Ballentines argument that Everett and DeWitt cannot get the right result for an arbitrary superposition of two spin ½ eigenfunctions. "Rather, the distribution Ballentine obtains is half and half. ... It is clear then that the many-worlds interpretation of Everett and DeWitt have not succeeded in providing an adequate account of probability." (p.307)
Bohm and Hiley then discuss David Deutschs attempt to fix this serious defect by assuming
"there is always an infinite and essentially constant number of actual universes" (p.307) But there are problems with Deutschs fix "he has chosen a certain basis for the interpretation ... this basis corresponds to the orientation of the apparatus. But recall that one of the basic aims of the theory is to get everything out of the formalism without any further assumptions. Deutsch has not shown why it is just these pieces of apparatus that will partition the universes in the way he has assumed. ... A yet more serious question ... is the significance of the random ensemble of universes that Deutsch had to assume in order to give meaning to the concept of probability. In a given branch of the wavefunction, after the measurement process is over, the quantum state of the whole set of particles will be well defined. But once such a quantum state is given no further differences within it are possible, at least according to the usually accepted form of the quantum theory itself which asserts that the wave function gives all possible physical information about the system. How then do the many universes in the same quantum state differ? Deutsch does not make this clear. It is difficult to see how one could avoid the further postulate that there is an additional randomly distributed parameter ... not present in ordinary quantum theory that would describe their differences. But to do this is to eliminate the key advantage claimed for the many-worlds interpretation." p.308
In other worlds Deutschs fix is incomplete and leads naturally to Bohms "beables"!
Murray Gell-Mann, in his book, The Quark and the Jaguar, asserts that his version of the many-worlds eliminates Bohrs need to introduce classical physics as an ad hoc apriori structure of reality that enables us to define measurement. Bohm and Hiley address this issue.
"DeWitts expressed intention was to avoid the assumption of a classical limit. Everett was less clear on this point ... Yet nothing like this has been done so far in an adequate way ... DeWitt appeals to an as yet vague notion of complexity ... On the other hand Everett explicitly denies that any such property of complexity is needed p.309 ... This lack of explanation of why the actual world of common experience corresponds to some kind of classical limit has indeed been noted by Deutsch ... he acknowledges that there is some such favored basis for interpretation ... the basis must be such as to somehow bring about the correct classical result. But Deutsch does not provide an answer to the question of how this basis is related to the classical limit." p.310
The same problem exists in Everetts version "here it involves a certain ambiguity as to what it is to be meant by awareness, memory or mind .... This would imply that everything was aware of everything else and that human awareness (or indeed machine awareness) were only a special case of this." p.311
"Recently these questions have been reexamined by Stapp and by Albert and Loewer in what is called the many-minds interpretation. The key step here is to assume that awareness or consciousness is not basically a physical property, but rather a property of mind which is supposed to be entirely different from matter. Thus the theory .... assumes a dualism between mind and matter along lines similar to that proposed much earlier by Descartes." p.311
I, of course, reject this traditional Cartesian dualism that mind is not physical. I conjecture that aware mind is the nonlocal form-dependent/intensity-independent physical field made by the quantum potentials attached to the material beables. The fundamental "low-energy" beables are classical point particles of spin 1/2 and local form-independent/intensity-dependent classical gauge fields of spin 0, 1 and 2. The "animate regime" is where self-organizing back-active post-quantum feedback-control loops are not washed out by environmental decoherence. This is a kind of more limited physical dualism in which there are two qualitatively different physical structures, i.e. the quantum mental and the classical material, that couple to each other to form an intrinsically aware self-organizing post-quantum machine. This is all "physical". The "spiritual", "values", indeed "culture" in general, has to do with the particular "content" imprinted on the quantum mind field. This content is in the shifting shape of the mental fitness landscape that guides and is guided by the motion of classical matter. Certain attractors at certain levels of Gell-Mann and Hartles "coarse graining" are very robust and represent "eternal values". The "forms" of Plato are, perhaps, robust attractors in the super-quantum gravity potential of the three-geometry of our actual expanding universe.
"The advantage of this [many-minds] approach is that we do not need to assume that matter has properties given to it by awareness, i.e. that physical meaning can be given in quantum theory to all branches of a linear superposition of wave functions without contradicting appearances." p.312
The post-quantum objective decay of all branches of the total quantum wave function in Stapps theory solves this problem. Similarly in Penroses post-quantum theory and in my "backactivity" version which can be tweaked to be consistent with Stapps.
"Such a dualist approach is in certain ways reminiscent of Wigners suggestions, but it must be remembered that in the latter, mind and matter are supposed to interact in a two-way process." p.312
This "two-way process" is, of course, the key idea of post-quantum backactivity. Wigner did not have the complete picture as he was using Bohrs epistemological approach, but he made a significant step forward at the time. Wigner certainly influenced my ideas on this.
"In the many-minds interpretation however there is no such [two-way] interaction. Rather mind is assumed to be capable of becoming conscious of certain aspects of the state of matter without influencing the latter in any way at all." p.312
In stark contrast, in my post-quantum mechanics of consciousness, the force of mind on matter is precisely the Bohm quantum force on the beable. The quantum potential is not a sentient mind until backactivity from beable, i.e. brain configuration in this case, is effective due to shielding from environmental decoherence along the lines suggested by Hameroff in his microtubule model.
"The many-minds interpretation shares with Everett the assumption that physical reality corresponds to the total wave function of the universe. Likewise along with Everett, it assumes that on the large scale stable configurations of matter exist which make possible not only measuring instruments, but also a reliable memory of what the results of measurement are. ... The basic new assumption relative to Everetts is that each person has a total mind that can split into many sub-minds that are not aware of each other." p.312
"we have further assumed a unique last stage, i.e. mind, in which the linear superposition fails ... By thus defining this unique last stage as a splitting of the mind and relating this split to the linear superposition of memories in the brain through random processes, the many minds interpretation avoids the difficulties of specifying the basis in which the linear superposition breaks down." p.312
I do not understand Bohm and Hiley on this last point of how the basis ambiguity is avoided in this one-way many-minds theory. In my post-quantum "two-way" theory there is not splitting of the minds in a random process. The post-quantum feedback-control loop makes the mind-brain process non-random. This is spontaneous self-organization that is the engine of our free will or intent. There is no basis ambiguity because the effective basis generates itself from moment to moment in the stream of consciousness. That is, the effective basis is in 1-1 correspondence with the basins of attraction in the post-quantum fitness landscape. There is effectively only one basin corresponding to an inner-felt experience in Stapps version of this. That is, there is only one surviving eigenfunction of the self-generating basis.
"On the other hand, this advantage has been gained at the expense of not only bringing in [traditional non-physical Cartesian] duality of mind and matter, but also of having to assume special properties of mind which are difficult to understand, i.e. the ability to be aware of matter without any interaction and the ability to split in a random way into many minds, each of which is associated to a particular physical state." p.313
Seen in this Bohmian form of insight, it is hard to see how brilliant men could have taken the many-minds model seriously. The fundamental defect in it is that it is "one-way" rater than "two-way". This is because orthodox random quantum mechanics really is one-way. It is, for this reason, incomplete. Although it is a good description of inanimate matter, it is not a good description of mind which requires non-random self-organizing post-quantum mechanics. For more on the social history of this see Bohms biography Infinite Potential by David Peat -- though that book has some annoying minor technical errors in it that should be corrected in future editions.
"the many-minds interpretation does not imply nonlocality ... Each mind becomes aware of only one facet of this multidimensional reality." p.313
This feature of many-minds conflicts with the experiences of meditators and people in altered states of consciousness caused by psychedelic drugs. Of course, the traditional classical materialist would simply explain altered states as distortion of the internal representation of the brain. On the other hand, a good many-minds theorist cannot use this way out self-consistently.
"The perceived classical world is then a result of the fact that each mind is only aware of a small part of the whole, the perceived classical world is in a sense an illusion. What is illusory is that this part is the whole. ... the many-minds interpretation does remove many of the difficulties with the interpretations of Everett and DeWitt, but requires making a theory of mind basically to account for the phenomena of physics. At present we have no foundations for such a theory. ." p.313
But we do. It is already latent in Bohms own form of insight about the "two-way" post-quantum extension of "one-way" orthodox quantum mechanics. Once this extension is done, Bohms quantum potential becomes the mind-field.
"... this [the many-minds theory] is equivalent to assuming that the state of awareness is not limited by anything like the uncertainty principle" p.313
"This means once again, that the claim of the many-worlds interpretation to avoid the addition of speculative new assumptions will fail." p.314
Bohm and Hiley discuss the relation of their theory to the several many-worlds theories in 13.6. An infinite number of actual splitting material universes, or even splitting sub-minds in one material universe, with the split unobservable in principle, is, in John Wheelers words, "excess metaphysical baggage". It appears to violate the fundamental principle "Occams razor". Bohms theory has been criticized because it says that the quantum wave function is a real physical field and because it keeps the material particles and fields of classical physics as "beables". This sort of criticism is, to say the least, irrational especially in view of the fact that the many-worlds variations do not deliver on their main promise of an "economy of principles". Furthermore, Bohms theory, unlike many-worlds and the Copenhagen interpretation, seamlessly integrates with classical physics which is obviously a virtue rather than a vice. Classical physics is simply the regime where the influence of the quantum potential is small compared with that of classical force fields. The nonlocality plus the "form", or "context", dependence, and the non-mechanical organic "objective wholeness" of the quantum potential explain the non-classical behavior of matter and radiation. This is all still orthodox quantum mechanics from an objective, or ontological, point of view. When we go beyond the orthodox "one-way" quantum, to the "two-way" post-quantum level we find the most fundamental form of Stuart Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" and we find Stapps "inner felt" aspect of animate matter that we are all most intimately aware of. The post-quantum feedback-control loop between quantum mind and classical body is the real "seat of the soul". It explains how the quantum ghost of "active information" interacts with its attached classical machine. This is not a return to Cartesian dualism in which the mind transcends physical law. Both mind and matter are physical aspects of sentient post-quantum reality inalienably endowed with inner feeling e.g. David Chalmerss article on consciousness in the December 1995 Scientific American.
"it is a well known fact that our sensory information comes from this [classical level where the quantum potential of the external environment can be neglected] ... we are directly aware of the [classical] particle aspect of the universe through the senses and that the more subtle wave function aspect is inferred by thought about our sensory experience in the domain that is manifest to the senses." p.314
Note that Bohm and Hiley are not describing the Godelian "strange loop", e.g. Douglas Hofstadters Godel, Escher, Bach, of introspection which can be represented by John Wheelers famous cartoon of the universe observing itself in his essay "Law Without Law". What Wheeler, using Bohrs epistemology rather than Einsteins ontology, did not make clear was that his "self-excited circuit" requires an extension of quantum mechanics to post-quantum mechanics in which the Eberhard barrier against "nonlocal communication" is removed. For a discussion of "nonlocal communication" from an unsympathetic "skeptical" point of view see Victor Stengers The Unconscious Quantum. Nonlocal communication means that the quantum entanglement of beables into a "common pool" of active information can be used as a communication channel in which one beable can be a "sender" while another is a "receiver". Furthermore, the receiver can decode the message from the sender without having to wait for additional correlation data to be sent from the sender to the receiver at light speed or below. This is not possible in quantum mechanics because of the "fragility" of the quantum potential of the common pool of active information. It is possible in post-quantum mechanics because the feedback-control loop between the common pool of quantum information and the separated classical beables makes the inseparable shared quantum potential "robust". Note, that active quantum information is not the same as Shannons classical information. Shannon laws on communication capacity etc. cannot be applied to quantum information without careful analysis. Furthermore, all the current work in "quantum cryptography" "quantum computers" and "quantum teleportation" depend essentially on orthodox quantum mechanics and, therefore, may be qualitatively surpassed in the new non-orthodox post-quantum mechanics. Orthodox quantum mechanics has the advantage over post-quantum mechanics of being well confirmed by experimental tests on non-complex inanimate organizations of matter and radiation. But this can be explaiined by the fact that post-quantum mechanics is very new, maybe two years old at most, and as soon as more competent young physicists "grok" it, new experiments will come to test it. The key test will be the construction of artifically conscious computing chips with inner felt-awareness like Commander Data in Star Trek, The Next Generation. These would be the "solid state entities" described by John Lilly in his autobiographical book, The Scientist.
The advantages of the Bohm theory over all forms of the many-worlds theory include "a simple and coherent account of why the large-scale world of common experience should be essentially classical". This refers to our perceptions of the exterior world not to our inner introspection which is a self-measurement of a sentient post-quantum potential.
" we are simply making use of the fact that at least in science as we know it thus far, all information comes ultimately through the manifest level." p.314
See 8.6 in Bohm and Hiley for the definition of the "manifest level". It is essentially the classical world.
"recalling that it comes not only through the particles, but also through the classical limit of electromagnetic field beables" ibid.
"The second advantage of our interpretation is that we do not have to assume the [Born probability] relation [ i.e. probability density in configuration space] = |psi|^2 [= retarded wave modulated by advanced star wave] ab initio, but that we are able to arrive at this as an equilibrium distribution resulting from chaotic processes." p.315
This is very important. Quantum mechanics is essentially the thermal equilibrium limit for sub-quantal "hidden variables" in the sense of Vigiers program. Post-quantum mechanics is the non-equilibrium extension of this. Stuart Kauffman and Lee Smolin in their popular books have shown how non-equilibrium gives rise to order in general via self-organized critical "avalanche" or "sandpile" phase transitions. Ilya Prigogine was a pioneer in this. Dimitri Nanopoulos suggests that the Vigier sub-quantum hidden variables are string states at the quantum gravity level. This is qualitatively compatible with Roger Penroses idea that inner-felt experience is an artifact of self-organized i.e. "orchestrated" quantum-gravity "objective collapse". This requires a scale-invariant flow from the Hawking "quantum foam" at the Planck scale of 10^28 ev to the bio-scale of less than 1 ev. This is the most difficult part of Penroses idea. On the other hand, it does establish a profound link between consciousness and quantum gravity which will be the key to the development of a practical warp drive that will require the "psychic" manipulation of the quantum-gravity foam. There is no way to make a warp drive using only classical physics. There is no way to make it using only orthodox quantum mechanics. The only way to make a practical warp drive is using post-quantum mechanics. If that is wrong, then we are stuck in this solar system. Valentini, in a Cambridge Ph.D. disseration under Sciama, shows how non-equilibrium forcing distortion away from the Born probability rule evades Eberhards theorem which says no nonlocal communication. That is, Eberhards theorem is only true in thermal equlibrium for the hidden variables. My point is that all life forms require a non-equilbrium distribution of these hidden variables. This non-equilibrium is implemented by a protection or screening mechanism against environmental decoherence of the essential part of the "brain" as outlined by Hameroff and Penrose e.g. Shadows of the Mind. I call this essential part of the brain, or body in general, the "Eccles Gate" i.e. the mesoscopic mind-matter interface, which in our case is in the microtubule infrastructure of our cells. This post-quantum non-equilibrium "complexity" regime is "on the edge" between classical determinism and completely random quantum indeterminism in the sense of the order-chaos "edge" of Gell-Mann, Kauffman and Smolin in their books, The Quark and the Jaguar, At Home in the Universe, and The Life of the Cosmos, respectively.
"It is clear that the many-worlds interpretation cannot do any of these things. ... it does not provide an adequare account of the large scale behavior at the classical limit. Moreover it is compelled to assume the [Born probability] relation ... And it gives no intuitively intelligible account of how quantum processes take place. ... it defies the imagination to grasp intuitively how the universe could split, and even more as to how it could be doing so in a stupendous number of ways. It equally defies the imagination to grasp intuitively how awareness could split into many parts that are not aware of each other, and even more so how awareness could be, in effect, identified with some part of a vector in Hilbert space." p.315
The last part is made intuitively obvious in post-quantum mechanics. With regard to David Deutschs "fix" he "had to assume an infinity of universes in the same quantum state, and in effect to imply a random distribution of these universes over an undefined parameter whose nature is completely unspecified ." p.315 Furthermore, Deutschs "hidden parameters" are "far less clear in meaning" than Bohms "beables". An objective analysis shows "no contest" between the "many-worlds" and the Bohm "ontology" with Bohm a clear winner.
"So there is no advantage in the number of hypotheses." With regard to DeWitts "splitting universes" it requires "an as yet unavailable definition of complexity and further equations determining just how this would determine the splitting of the universes ... if we adopt Everetts approach or indeed that of the many-minds interpretation, we have to do something similar with regard to the splitting of awareness".
It is easier to imagine how to split awareness, e.g. multiple personality disorder, than to split an entire material universe, but the main defect in many-minds is that it is "one-way" with mind only a passive epiphenomenon. There is no spontaneous self-organization in the many-minds theory.
"In view of all these unresolved problems we have been led to ask why the many-worlds interpretation seems to be so attractive to some physicists. ... the greatest advantage of the many-worlds interpretation for its proponents is that it provides an ontological formulation which relates all its basic concepts only to Hilbert space. In effect it says everthing can be put into some correspondence with Hilbert space. ... we feel that the many-worlds interpretation has interesting possibilities, but that its presentation would be greatly clarified if it were frankly admitted that some of its basic hypotheses are of a highly speculative nature." p.316
Indeed, an it follows that it is intellectually dishonest to claim that "nonlocality" is "The Story Distorted" (Ch 12 of The Quark and the Jaguar) and that his version of "many worlds" is the obvious way to go. But I will come back to Gell-Mann later.
Chapter 14 of Bohm's and Hiley's The Undivided Universe "Extension of ontological theories beyond the domain of quantum mechanics" is about early versions of post-quantum mechanics. Section 14.2 "Our general world view, including our attitude to physical and mathematical aspects of basic concepts" is very important.
"the basic attitude in the many worlds interpretation is to take the present general mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics as the essential truth and to try to derive the physical interpretation as something that is implicit in the mathematics." p.319
The basic error here is that Everett, DeWitt, Deutsch et-al use the "present" formulation which is "one-way" and not "two-way" between wave and particle. That is, in orthodox quantum theory within the Bohm ontology, the quantum wave exerts a non-classical force its attached classical particle or "beable", but there is no direct self-backaction of the classical particle on its quantum wave. Think of the quantum wave as the "mind" and its attached particle as the "brain". Then the Bohm force is the force of thought on the brain, but there is no direct force of the brain on its mind. Such a mind could not perceive or experience anything at all because our experiences are clearly the result of the brain literally changing its mind! Although I have used a simple single particle picture here, this is easily extended to complex systems by using "configuration space" which is a "state space" in the sense of classical chaos theory. Nonlocality between separated beables then comes into play. The form-dependence is already apparent in even the one-particle problem. Although the above example is for matter which is classically particle-like, Bohms theory also applies to classical electromagnetic, gravitational and nuclear strong and weak fields which are classically wave-like. There is a big qualitative difference between classical wave fields and quantum wave fields. The classical wave fields are in ordinary space, while the quantum wave fields are in configuration space. The configuration space for a classical wave field has an infinite number of dimensions -- one dimension for each point of physical space which is assumed to be a continuum. Note, that orthodox quantum theory allows the qualitative nature of the quantum wave evolution in time to change because of changes in the interaction Hamiltonian and because of changes in the boundary conditions. Both of these kinds of changes are from outside the system due to the environment. In contrast, the self-organizing change of direct post-quantum backactivity is a self-referential kind of change. The orthodox quantum changes are the basis for the random Darwinian "natural selection" in the evolution of complex systems. The post-quantum changes are the basis for non-random "spontaneous self-organization" which, in Stuart Kauffmans theory, is even more fundamental than random natural selection. The two, of course work together, hand in hand.
The attitude of the many-worlders
"towards the mathematics has not always been dominant in physics ... with the advent of quantum theory ... the mathematics became much more highly developed and the physical interpretation much more abstract and indirect, as well as much less clear ... Heisenberg ... said very explicitly that the essential truth was in the mathematics ... This view has become the common one among most of the modern theoretical physicists ... without an equation there is really nothing to talk about ... we have a rather different attitude to the mathematics. Our approach is not simply a return to the [older] notion that the mathematics merely enables us to talk about the physical concepts more precisely. Rather we feel that these two kinds of concepts represent extremes and that it is necessary to be in a process of thinking that moves between these extremes in such a way that they complement each other." p.320
"For example, starting with Schrodingers equation expressed in the Hamilton-Jacobi form, we were led ... to a new physical concept of a particle which is affected by a quantum field in a way that depends only on the form of the latter and not on its amplitude. With the aid of the concept of active information implied by this behavior, we can first of all obtain a coherent explanation of the quantum process which gives us new insights into the quantum theory and enables us to understand it in a different way. But we do not regard these physical concepts as mere imaginative displays of the meaning of our equations. Instead ... we can then move to the other side of this process of thought and take our physical concepts as a guide for the development of new equations." p.321
To put what Bohm and Hiley have to say in a current context, let us look at The New York Times of Tuesday, July 22, 1997 "Signal Travels Far -- and Faster Than Light" p.B11. Malcolm Browne citing Ray Chiao, who is forced, like all of us once were before Bohms stroke of genius, by Bohrs mainstream epistemological Copenhagen interpretation to be unnecessarily mystical and obscure, writes: "But an underlying enigma of quantum mechanics remains unfathomed. The connections that persist between distant but entangled particles are one of the deep mysteries of quantum mechanics, Dr. Chiao said in an interview These connections are a fact of nature proven by experiments, but to try to explain them philosophically is very difficult. he said." I have two comments on this. First, Ray Chiao is a really brilliant experimental physics professor at the University of California in Berkeley with equally talented students who is doing the "right stuff" when it comes to experiments in fundamental quantum mechanics. But if he had read Bohm's and Hiley's book and thought about it carefully he would not have made the above remark that "to try to explain them philosophically is very difficult". Second, Chiaos remark "These connections are a fact of nature proven by experiments", which I do agree with, put the lie to Murray Gell-Manns Chapter 12 in his book, The Quark and the Jaguar, that these faster-than-light connections are "The Story Distorted" and that the local "many-worlds" theory is the proper complete theory.
"We find, Dr Chiao said, that a barrier placed in the path of a tunneling particle does not slow it down. In fact, we detect particles on the other side of the barrier that have made the trip in less time than it would take the particles to traverse an equal distance without a barrier -- in other words, the tunneling speed apparently greatly exceeds the speed of light. Moreover, if you increase the thickness of the barrier the tunneling speed increases as high as you please. This is another great mystery of quantum mechanics".
In fact, it is no mystery at all in Bohms ontology where the particle beables have been predicted to tunnel faster than light. It is only a mystery in the epistemological Copenhagen interpretation and in the ontological many-worlds interpretation both of which do not have beables. Of course, in the case of the quantum tunneling of light, there are no point particle-like "photon" beables like there are for, electrons and neutrons, for example. The Bohm beables for light are the classical electromagnetic field configurations over all space at a fixed time in the cosmological frame provided by the Hubble flow of our expanding universe. The super-quantum potential sweeps up or gathers together this spread out classical electromagnetic field energy in a superluminal way to explain Chiaos experimental observations.
Dr. Gisens experiment showing faster than light connections between photon detections over seven miles compared to Aspects original 30 meters or so has been paid for by communications corporations trying to develop "quantum cryptography" for secure internet connections that cannot be tapped into by hackers. This strategy will work only if orthodox quantum mechanics is the final complete theory of matter and radiation. It may not work if my post-quantum mechanics is right because post-quantum effects de-randomize supposedly irreducibly random quantum sequences.
A digression: I realized on July 28, 1997 that Eberhards theorem not only prevents nonlocal communication in orthodox quantum mechanics, but it also prevents the manufacture of exotic matter for a practical warp drive using only quantum gravity as distinct from post-quantum gravity. That is, any practical warp drive for future spacecraft will need to use a robust superquantum potential for a region of the 3-geometry that is to be warped. Feedback-control between the superquantum potential and the region of the 3-geometry is essential to get stable macroscopic effects. Ordinary quantum gravity is irreducibly random and, therefore, the superquantum potential is "fragile" (Bohm's and Hiley's term) and no large scale stability is possible.
Bohm and Hiley reject the currently fashionable idea of a "Theory of Everything" (TOE).
"Rather our view is that nature in its total reality is unlimited, not merely quantitatively, but also qualitatively in its depth and subtlety of laws and processes. Our knowledge at any stage is an abstraction from this total reality and therefore cannot be expected to hold indefinitely when extended into new domains." p.321
The "new domain" for 21st Century Post-Quantum Physics is the unification of mind with gravity along the general lines suggested by Roger Penrose.
"Our theories are not primarily forms of knowledge about the world but rather, they are forms of insight that arise in our attempts to obtain a perception of a deeper nature of reality as a whole. ... we do not suppose that physical concepts are merely something to be put in correspondence with the basic mathematical concepts. Nor do we suppose that the mathematical concepts are necessarily subordinate to basic physical concepts. Rather both of these are appearances and their relationships may provide a yet more comprehensive appearance which guides our action toward the unlimited and unknown reality. The imaginative qualitative concept is therefore, in the long run, just as key a feature of of this overall appearance as is the precise and abstract mathematical concept. The two together not only present a more comprehensive appearance than either one alone could do, but each can serve as a clue for further development in the other." p.323
My current idea of post-quantum mechanics with the Bohm force (of the quantum pilot-wave on its attached classical beable) together with the opposite backactivity (of the beable on its pilot-wave) to form a self-organizing feedback-control loop making the quantum potential robust instead of fragile, and making the total wave-beable system adaptive and sentient, is an "imaginative qualitative concept". Post-quantum processes, in contrast to quantum processes, are not irreducibly random. The departure from randomness is a signature of sentience and intent. Eberhards theorem is bypassed so that nonlocal communication is permitted.
"The ultimate nature of awareness is unlimited and unknown, like that of the universe as a whole of which it is a part. ... this general approach implies a certain kind of limit to determinism." p.324
Individual processes in classical physics are determined. They are not determined in quantum physics so that we say that individual processes are indeterministic. Only their probability can be given according to the Born rule. On the hand, the probability amplitude leads to the quantum wave function which does evolve deterministically between measurements in the traditional "collapse" picture whether that collapse is epistemological, i.e. in the mind of the observer, or ontological, i.e. "out there" independent of the mind of the observer. In contrast, in the really new post-quantum mechanics we have the qualitatively new feature of self-organization in which the evolution of the wave function, now a sentient objective mind-field, is not simply deterministic in the orthodox quantum sense. Rather, it evolves adaptively depending on the actual path of its beable. This is precisely where free-will and intent come into play. Of course, orthodox quantum mechanics is still valid for inanimate matter without inner felt-experience or "qualia". My theory clearly explains the physical nature of mind as an objective "common pool of active information" that guides the material body it is attached to, while also changing in response to classical sensory signals in that body. It is these changes which are our inner-felt experiences of qualia.
Bohm and Hiley have a more general meta-notion of "self-determined" based on Godels incompleteness theorem which is not the same as they way I am using it as Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization".
"each theory is evidently an abstraction from a totality that is inherently unlimited, both qualitatively and quantitatively. As such it cannot be entirely self-determined, because it always depends in various ways on what has been left out. So the necessity of its self-determination is only relative and not absolute." p.324
While Bohm and Hiley here talk about theories on the meta-level, the same applies to the objects of these theories when they are open systems far from thermal equlibrium. Animate systems are a special class of non-equilibrium open systems characterized by post-quantum backactivity overcoming environmental decoherence. Classical and orthodox quantum dissipative structure of the Prigogine theory do not have post-quantum backactivity. What is "left out" of an animate self-organizing adaptive system e.g. Gell-Manns "IGUS", is precisely the Darwinian natural selection that is always there in addition to the inner post-quantum spontaneous self-organization.
"Even here this self-determination may include unstable chaotic orders which approximate randomness ... So ultimately our overall world view is neither absolutely deterministic nor absolutely indeterministic. ... these two extremes are abstractions ... Which view is appropriate in a given case will depend both on the unknown totality and our particular mode of contact with it (e.g. the kinds of experiments we are able to do)" p.324
"Mode of contact" may include introspection as well as normal scientific measurement.
"our basic concepts and categories of thought are ultimately appearances. If this is so, what then is the point of making an ontological interpretation of the quantum theory? ... every [correct] theory ... is more, in the sense that its basic concepts ... reflect reality within its own domain. ... " ibid.
Bohm and Hiley reject absolute claims of "independently existent realities ... not dependent on context or deeper levels of being." p.324
"each form of thought of the essence is an appearance, it also reflects a reality that is however always dependent for its existence as well as for its qualities and properties on broader contexts and deeper levels." p.325
Again this is an intuitive way to apprehend the physical meaning of Godels incompleteness theorem. Contact with John Wheelers Bohrian "observer-participator" is made: "there is an irreducible participation of object and observing apparatus in each other in the quantum domain". That is, the object and observing apparatus are "entangled" or "connected" in the sense of the nonlocal form-dependent Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) effect. This is orthodox quantum mechanics -- no sentience, (i.e. inner-felt experience) yet.
"our particular ontological interpretation has the further advantage that it can be grasped more readily in an intuitive and imaginative way than is possible with a basically epistemological interpretation such as, for example, that of Bohr. Besides ... it makes possible certain kinds of extensions of the basic equations which would not be possible in a purely epistemological approach." p.326
Post-quantum backactivity from beable to its pilot wave is a good example of this. It could not even be conceived of within Bohrs or the many-worlds approaches because they have no beables in them! That is why, Stapp never really connects his ontological collapse with self-organization. Penrose comes closer to Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" when he uses the term "orchestrated".
"Finally the view that our theories constitute appearances does not deny the independent reality of the universe as a whole. Rather it implies that even the appearances are part of this overall reality and make a contribution to it." p.326
This is even clearer in post-quantum mechanics where the physical quantum field when endowed with backactivity is literally a mind-field. The appearances of theory are then physical patterns imprinted in the physical mind-field which couples to other more conventional inanimate physical fields like the metric field of gravitation. Here is the essential clue to practical warp drive.
Bohm and Hiley (Ch.14), following John Bells presentation, discuss early post-quantum models. The first, i.e. 14.3, is that of Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber (GRW) who postulate a universal spontaneous objective collapse that seems to be compatible with Vigiers sub-quantum level. The wave function psi evolves "according to Schrodingers equation. However, there is a further process which reduces the spread of the wave function over each particle coordinate rn, to something of the order of a new universal constant @" p.326 There is no contradiction with experiments showing quantum coherence over long distances (e.g. seven miles recently for photon pairs) because "quantum mechanical interference properties over long distances have been extensively tested for the case of a single particle.. and at most for a few particles .. We can avoid this difficulty by supposing that the rate of decay & depends on the number of particles, N, involved ... & = N/t*, where t* is a ... new constant of nature ... chosen such that the rate of decay of the original wave function is negligible for a system of a few particles and quite rapid for systems of many particles." p.327 Thus, the GRW model has two adhoc universal constants. However, Dimitri Nanopoulos claims to be able to derive this sort of model from a more fundamental superstring theory.
"we assume a process in which the spread of the wave function is reduced to something of the order of @ around a center x which is distributed at random. For the nth particle this process can be regarded as transforming the original wave function psi(r1,r2, ... rN,t) into a new wave function
psi(r1,r2 ... rN,t) = f(x-rn) psi(r1 ....rN,t)/Rn(x) (14.1) p.327
The factor f(x) is normalized
Integral d3x|f(x)| 2 = 1 (14.2)
GRW suggested that f(x) be a Gaussian
f(x) = Kexp[-x2/2@2] (14.3)
|Rn(x)| 2 = N-fold multiple integral d3r1 ... d3rN |f(x - rn)| 2/|psi|2 (14.4)
The centre x is distributed at random with probability |Rn(x)|2 .... each particle is undergoing this process ... so that after a time t*/N, the wave function will be reduced more or less to something having a range @ for each particle. Interference will be negligible beyond this range, but will be as predicted by quantum mechanics within this range, provided of course that we are considering times appreciably longer than t*/N ... the above assumptions will enable us to satisfy our requirements that large scale systems (such as the observing apparatus) will be fairly localized, while systems of a few particles need not be localized." p.327
Bohm and Hiley then show in detail on p.328 how GRW solves the paradox of Schrodingers Cat with no "unacceptable consequences". Ad hoc values of @ = 10^-5cm and t* = 10^16 sec (i.e. a billion years) are chosen, though Nanopoulos claims to be able to derive similar values from more fundamental principles. GRW does not use Bohms beables but takes the more traditional view that the Hilbert space provides a complete description of quantum reality Also it is not clear how to take GRW to the relativistic level. Nevertheless, and this is what is important for us, there is a clear connection of the GRW model to my post-quantum "backactivity" idea. Thus, Bohm and Hiley wrote in 14.6:
"One way to make Schrodingers equation dependent on the particle positions ( so that there would be a two-way relationship between wave and particle) can be seen by considering equation (14.1). In this equation, we can regard rn as the actual position of the nth particle. From the same arguments as apply to the GRW approach, it would follow that the overall wave function would tend to [objectively] collapse towards the actual particle positions, so that, in a large scale system, the empty wave packets of our interpretation would tend to disappear." p.346
This is a very important remark. First it shows a mathematical implementation of my qualitative idea of backactivity. The crucial form of insight that Bohm had was that orthodox quantum mechanics is a "one way" approximation in which the wave exerts a new non-classical force on its attached particle without any kind of direct compensating back-action of the particle on its guiding pilot wave. This is clearly unsatisfactory esthetically for the same reason that Einstein found the ether-based interpretation of Maxwells field unsatisfactory. This led Einstein to the Lorentz transformations. Similarly, when Maxwell introduced the displacement current to make Faradays law of induction and Amperes law of magnetic generation relatively more symmetric with each other in the special case of empty space. This led to Maxwells prediction of transverse electromagnetic waves in empty space moving at the speed of light. The qualitative "two way" idea is important because of its cybernetic" meaning in terms of Norbert Weiners "feedback-control loop" and Stuart Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" of non-equilibrium complex adaptive systems. The fit of Bohms quantum potential in the configuration space of the beable to Kauffmans "fitness landscapes", and the formal connection of Bohms theory to neural net theory is also very suggestive. The link to Stapps objective collapse theory of post-quantum mind is also obvious and leads us to reformulate Stapps idea that inner-felt experience is in 1-1 correspondence with the lone surviving basin of attraction on the quantum potential fitness landscape that self-organizes itself when also pumped by external sensory input from the classical neuronal and chemical messengers. It is intuitively clear, from these considerations, that post-quantum backactivity, which, when added to the Bohm force, closes the two-way feedback control circuit between quantum mind and classical matter, can be pictured as a "self-friction" or self-dissipation that introduces a really new objective, but intrinsically sentient, self-organizing nonunitarity into the new physics. The goal of conserving quantum probability current for open non-equilibirium animate systems is much more explicitly renounced. The axiomatic approaches to quantum field theory (e.g. Wightmans and Chews "bootstrap)) based on unitarity, locality, Poincare invariance, etc are seen to throw the living baby out with the bathwater and are fundamentally misconceived if one wants a fundamental picture of the universe along the lines suggested by Lee Smolin in The Life of the Cosmos.
Environmental decoherence is another kind of external friction from the environment. Darwinain natural selection pressures on populations of complex adaptive sentient post-quantum systems can be ultimately traced to environmental decoherence. This is distinct from the internal self-friction
Gell-Mann and Hartle use environmental decoherence but they have nothing corresponding to post-quantum self-friction and, therefore, miss the cybernetic dimension of their "IGUS" altogther. So the important ratio is the internal self-organizing dissipative decay rate to the external Darwinian selection pressure decay rate. That is
q = &self/&Darwin = N t*Darwin/t*self
The coherence time for self-organization of an N-part complex adaptive system is t*self/N -- as in the GRW theory. The window of opportunity for this most fundamental form of self-organization to operate free from disruption from the external environment is t*Darwin. If we want a sentient system to function properly, we need to have t*Darwin long compared to t*self/N. This means that q > 1 is the post-quantum animate regime while q < 1 is the inanimate orthodox quantum regime. Note that t*Darwin may also have an N dependence. This gives a bit more formal structure to Stuart Kauffmans intuitive ideas in At Home in the Universe.
Bohm and Hiley, in 14.6, describe the relation of their theory to Stapps ontological theory.
"His aim is to develop a theory in which quantum mechanics would describe an actual process taking place without any necessary reference to human observers." p.330
While the aim of all ontological approaches to quantum physics is to expunge the inherent solipsism of Bohrs epistemological interpretation, this does not imply that mind is not an intrinsic part of physical reality. The point is that one can have objective quantum transitions happen actually without the need to record an impression in the mind of an observer-participator, yet that mind, though irrelevant to the external transition "out there", is, itself, a post-quantum field which is an integral part of a self-organizing complex adaptive system consisting of it together with its attached classical beable which is made of atoms, molecules and electromagnetic fields.
"In doing this [Stapp] is inspired by the ideas of Whitehead concerning nature as process."
Note that "process" is more fundamental than classical flat space-time. It is more like "pregeometry" with an order of succession that is more congenial with Bohms need to break classical Lorentz invariance in the quantum domain. That is Bohm needs a preferred frame in which the [super] quantum potentials act instantaneously. Classical general relativity does restrict Lorentz invariance from a global symmetry to a local tangent space symmetry and even this local symmetry breaks down when the quantum gravity fluctuations of the metric are large. A new non-random controllable form of these metric fluctuations may get large far above the Planck scale of 10^-33 cm in the post-quantum regime due to a phase transition of the super-quantum potential of the three-metric, i.e. the ADM beables, from a fragile to a robust mode due to stabilization by feedback-control when environmental decoherence is screened out -- or at least made relativley small. This is a highly speculative intuition based upon a melding of ideas of Penrose on "orch OR" and Bohms ontology. This conjectured process would be a kind of scale-invariant turbulence of information connecting the Planck scale to the bio-scale of energy over twenty eight powers of ten.
"Whitehead works in terms of the basic concept of an actual occassion, or as Stapp might call it, an actual event. ... that which is actual is represented, not by an infinitely thin space-like surface advancing through the space-time continuum, [as in Dysons unified picture of quantum electrodynamics based on the synthesis or Feynmans, Schwingers and Tomonagas pictures - Sarfatti note] but rather by a sequence of actual processes, each of which refers to a bounded space-time region. ... The basic concept is therefore neither becoming in three-dimensional space nor being in the four-dimensional world, it rather it is becoming in the four dimensional world." p.330
Stapps version of post-quantum theory is strictly "low-energy" as it relies on classical space-time, therefore, it is not able to explain quantum gravitys "pregeometry" which has classical space-time as a limit. It is hard to see how Stapps Whiteheadian picture can connect to Penroses linking of conscious experience to a quantum gravity phenomenon. If Penrose is correct, there is some sort of controllable psychokinetic link over 28 powers of ten on the energy scale. Of course, Penrose can be wrong on this, but if he is right he is pointing to the most profound discovery in the history of human thought. Stapp realizes, of course, the low-energy nature of his initial model.
"We have referred to regions of space-time ... but ultimately Stapp wants to deirve even these from quantum theory ... He has shown that the soft photons emitted by matter have well defined classical parts described by coherent states ... this shows that the quantum theory may contain a classical domain within it. Such a classical domain is wht makes it possible to define the regions ... in a physical way." ibid.
It is not clear if this same idea will work in quantum gravity because we can not think of wavy gravitons in a non-perturbative theory. One must use 1-D strings instead.
"Stapp ... considers process to consist of a well-ordered sequence of actual events. Just prior to event n, there are several possibilities of what may be actualized ... Stapps basic idea also defines everything within the framework of Hilbert space ... the assumption that events correspond to projection operators, even though these are not measured, is evidently something new, not contained in the current quantum theory. ... One of the principal difficulties with Stapps proposal is that the concept of an event has not been very thoroughly developed ... Next, it seems that the classical parts of quantum mechanics should be described in terms of the movement of fermionic particles as well as bosons ... we shall discuss certain proposals of Gell-Mann and Hartle which do start along these lines..." p.331
The post-quantum mechanics of Gell-Mann and Hartle (G-MH)
Their approach starts off in a way similar to Stapps use of projection operators to describe actual events. G-MH want to do quantum cosmology where the traditional observed-observer distinction, with a separate classical level, of the Copenhagen interpretation of Bohr fails. Bohms theory is able to do quantum cosmology in the most natural way of all the competing interpretations because it is not essentially a statistical theory, but it describes individual systems without the need for a statistical ensemble of identically prepared systems. There is only one universe. One cannot have a statistical ensemble of universes. Even in chaotic inflation with many visible universes -- there is only one vast beable with many pieces of space-time geometry.
"These authors criticize traditional approaches in a way similar to that in which we do. In addition they especially emphasize the question of making an interpretation that is adequate for cosmology. In such a cosmological approach they say there can be no fundamental division into observer and observed. Besides, there is no reason to assume a classical world as fundamental or outside the quantum theory." p.331
Everett showed how to put the observer directly into the theory. But Everetts program of many parallel worlds not able to detect each other failed, or is, at least, incomplete, as explained in detail earlier. G-MH recognize this.
"Gell-Mann and Hartle feel that [Everett] does not adequately explain the existence of a classical world or the meaning of the branching that replaces measurement in assigning probabilities." p.332
Remember, that, in contrast to many-worlds, Stapps ontological post-quantum mechanics has objective collapse of many possibilities to on actuality. In the case of a complet sentient system, Stapp postulates that the objective collapse generates an inner-felt experience. This is similar to Wigners conjecture except that Wigner was apparently working in the traditional Bohr epistemological paradigm. Also Wigner was claiming a more active role with consciousness, in the final analysis, causing the collapse even of distant material systems. Stapps view is more conservative. He restricts conscious experience to the collapse of the quantum wave of the brain and the inner-felt experience is more like a passive effect of that objective collapse from potentia to actua in Heisenbergs sense. Stapp is never clear on how active intent or free will enters the mind-matter relationship. Bohms theory, in my extension of it from quantum to post-quantum, is much better here because the objective force of thought on its attached brain is the negative gradient of the quantum potential in the configuration space to the relevent "Eccles gate" subsystem of the classically material brain beable. The backactivity, beyond orthodox quantum mechanics, is how the classical material brain beable literally and directly changes its attached quantum mind field, and it is this self-change that is our inner-felt experience. The important word here is "change". The orthodox quantum changes of the wave function via changing the interaction Hamiltonian and the boundary conditions are external changes from other particles and fields in the environment as distinct from the self-changes of backactivity. Thus, the external orthodox indirect quantum changes correspond to traditional Darwinian natural selection on a population of complex adaptive systems, whereas the new direct post-quantum backactivity changes correspond to Stuart Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" in its most fundamental physical implementation.
"The theory of Gell-Mann and Hartle has to be understood, from the very outset, as dealing with nothing less than the entire history of the universe from the beginning to the end." p.332
Therefore, it has a teleological component in which both the past and the future influence what happens in the present. This is not surprising since Feynmans "histories" using the Lagrangian, as distinct from the Hamiltonian, also has influences from future to present as well as from past to present. One needs to specify the path at both the initial and final moments. It will not do, to try to specify both the initial position and momentum, as in the classical Hamiltonian method. Aharonovs theory has this feature as well when one inquires on what happens somewhere on the path between the beginning and the end.. It all comes from the Wheeler-Feynman classical electrodynamics where present radiation reaction is from advanced waves from the future. The appearance of orthodox retarded causality is contingent on a total abosrber boundary condition which is not actually obeyed in the standard cosmological model of our expanding universe. Cramers "transactional" picture of orthodox quantum mechanics with a "handshake" between "offer" (retarded) and "confirmation" (advanced) quantum waves mimics the classical Wheeler-Feynman idea. The histories are in the classical configuration space. It is only in the limit of a single particle that the configuration space is the same as ordinary three-dimensional space that we directly perceive.
"They argue that it is sufficient to focus on projection operators P(t) representing properties that at time t are either present or not. In this, their position is similar to that of Stapp... Like Stapp, Gell-Mann and Hartle consider time sequences of such projection operators, averaged over the intial density matrix of the universe." p.332
The physical meaning of the density matrix of the universe is not clear without invoking a metaphysical statistical ensemble of possible universes. This seems to contradict the initial motivation of G-MH to be able to describe the actual universe. Bohms theory does not have this conceptual ambiguity.
"And like Stapp, they suggest a means of using these sequences to define a classical domain within the structure of Hilbert space. ... Stapp used projection operators corresponding to the quasi-classical coherent states of a field oscillator in order to represent possible sequences of what he called actual events. Gell-Mann and Hartle use a different kind of projection operator for essentially the same purpose. What they do is to consider any one of the fields that are supposed to to be basic in physics, e.g., as with Stapp, the electromagnetic. Their essential step is to obtain a classically adequate description of these fields represented by generalized coordinates Q^i(t), not by using coherent states, but rather by simply coarse-graining the field variables defined, for example, at any point in space and time. Such coarse-graining only restricts their field values to a certain range, and says nothing about the further details within this range. To this end they introduce sets of projection operators ... which are unity in a given range of field variables and zero outside ... If the total set of ranges ... covers all possible values of the field variables, they call this set exhaustive. An exhaustive set evidently need not be a complete set of operators ... They then go on to define sets of alternative histories. These consist of time sequences of exhaustive sets of alternative ranges ... Such sequences provide coarse-grained descriptions of a set of possible histories with coarse-graining of each actual event ... A set of alternative histories is then obtained by allowing [the set of range variables of the fields, i.e. alpha] to vary over all possible values." p.333
"The extreme case of such a description is a completely fine-grained history which is specified by giving a complete set of operators at all times. This sort of history is used in Feynmans treatment of quantum mechanics in terms of a sum over histories, which begins by specifying the amplitude in terms of a particular basis of generalized coordinates. Gell-Mann and Hartle suggest for this basis, the set of all fundamental field variables at all points of space." pp.333-4
This is similar to Bohms theory where the beables include all the classical field variables at all points in space. Bohm also includes the positions of the point source charged particles of these fields among the beables that feel the new kind of quantum force from the common pool of active nonlocal intensity-independent information. This field of information acts directly in configuration space rather than in three-dimensional space where the classical gauge fields act directly. This is a crucial qualitative difference between the quantum pilot fields and the classical gauge fields or beables on which the former act.
"It is essential that completely fine-grained histories as defined in the previous section cannot consistently be assigned probabilities ... It is the basic claim of Gell-Mann and Hartle that by suitably defining coearse-grained histories they can obtain a consistent attribution of probabilities. The condition that two projection operators can represent two distinct possibilities for actual events is not only that they commute, but that their product ... is zero. ... Their essential starting point is to note that all that is required is to satisfy this condition for the actual initial state of the universe." p.334
In the chaotic inflation theory there are an infinite number of actual expanding universes popping out of Hawkings pre-geometric "quantum foam" with all possible initial conditions on the wavefunction for each of them. This assumes that there are separate wavefunctions for each piece rather than a single pure entangled state. If the latter, the local density matrices for each universe in the multi-verse would be an entropic density matrix which would violate Penroses idea that the initial condition of our universe had zero entropy. The latter gives rise to the observed arrow of time. If the chaotic inflation theory is wrong so that there is only one actual large universe, then the puzzle is one of the extreme fine-tuning of the initial conditions which allow life to form. One solution of the fine-tuning problem is that the initial conditions are engineered from the far future of our universe by an advanced intelligence that has mastered the technology of time-travel to the past. The condition of "global self-consistency" around closed time-like curves (CTCs) allows this to happen in a consistent way. Post-quantum gravity should permit this even if orthodox quantum gravity does not. This would that be Wheelers universe of a "self-excited circuit". It would be a self-organizing conscious universe based upon the projection of active information backwards in time from the far future to the phase transition that explodes into the big bang out of the four dimensional "cosmic egg" on Hawkings "imaginary time". That is, a trigger self-fluctuation from the future causes the phase transition from imaginary to real time. This idea that zero point vacuum fluctuations have advanced causes has been explored by several researchers including Fred Hoyle and, independently, Charles L. Bennett (e.g. Phys Rev A, 1967 or 76? "Precausal Quantum Mechanics"). There is a close connection between radiation reaction or the self-force on an electron, for example, and the zero point electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations. We will come back to that.
"A sufficient condition for the decoherence of two alternative histories ... may then be obtained by integrating the projection operators ... with the density matrix of the universe. This will then yield what we may call the decoherence functional ... A further assumption is that ... the diagonal elements of [the decoherence functional] are approximately equal to the probabilities ... of the corresponding histories. ... the smallness of the off-diagonal elements [of the decoherence functional] is assumed to be the condition for a consistent assignment of approximate probabilities ..." pp.334-5
Gell-Mann and Hartle write:
"decoherence thus generalizes and replaces the notion of measurement ... Decoherence is a more precise, more objective, more observer independent idea ... We may assign probabilities to various values of reasonable scale density fluctuations in the early universe, whether or not anything like a measurement was carried out on them and certainly whether or not there was an observer to do it."
Contrast this with John Archibald Wheelers notion of "delayed choice" based upon Bohrs purely epistemological Copenhagen interpretation. In that paradigm the future does determine what can be said about the past. Since Bohrs theory is only about our knowledge we know nothing about any objective universe "out there" independent of our consciousness. All we can hope to do is to predict consensus correlations in our experience. Bohrs view is an extreme solipsistic pragmatism that really annoyed Einstein. Bohm was able to salvage Einsteins objectivity but the price that had to be paid, i.e. nonlocality, was too much for Einstein because it violated the philosophical picture behind special relativity even if the objective nonlocal Bohmian mechanics yielded statistical predictions consistent with special relativity. This is because Einstein, like Bohm, did not believe that a fundamenal physical theory could only be statistical. It must be capable, like Bohms mechanics is, of describing individual complex systems as well as ensembles of identically prepared simple systems. That is why Einstein said that he did not believe that God was a gambler playing craps with the universe.
Bohm and Hiley then begin to discuss the weak points in the G-MH variation on "many worlds" using relatively decohered "alternative histories".
"if this approach is to be carried out consistently, it is necessary to deal with a number of points that require clarification. To begin with, in principle, any set of projection operators might be thought of as suitable for defining decohering sets of alternative histories ... Which, among all these sets, are the ones that correspond to a sequence of actual events? .... what determines the preferred basis for the various branches that are to be realized in the process of proliferation of the many universes? The new idea here is that it is the evolution of the universe from its initial conditions which should provide this determination, and that this would remove an important ambiguity in the many-worlds approach. It is cleat that we cannot in the foreseeable future hope to carry out for the universe a calculation of all decohering sets of alternative histories. What Gell-Mann and Hartle do is to investigate specific illustrative examples of decoherence in more restrictive circumstances ... dynamic decoherence ... is brought about through the dynamic evolution of the quantum state ...All of them deal with simplified systems such as a single harmonic oscillator with coordinates x coupled to a large set of oscillators constituting an environment. The general result is that two histories corresponding to different trajectories x(t) and x(t), will decohere in very short times for typical situations such as having the environmental oscillators in an initial state of thermal equilibrium." p.336
Note in the case of the Hameroff-Penrose microtubule model for consciousness, the environmental Frohlich electric dipole oscillators are not in thermal equilibrium. It is absolutely essential that they are held far off the thermodynamic branch. Therefore, we require protection against G-MH environmental decoherence of the classical material beables attached to the quantum mind field in order for post-quantum backactivity to kick in so that sentient self-organization is generated.
"Gell-Mann and Hartle feel that these illustrative examples made it very plausible that decoherence will be widespread in the universe for the familiar classical variables". For example this would explain why we do not see the track of a projectile spreading out into quantum superpositions in its orbit." p.337
But it does not explain our minds, i.e. our inner streams of consciousness, which are not "classical variables" in the G-MH sense even though they are fed evironmental messages via classical level signals. It is post-quantum backactivity that transduces this classical sensory Shannon information into those changes of active information which constitute the contents of our experience.
"Ordinarily when we use coarse-graining, we are introducing something depending on a context related either to our sensory perceptions or to our instruments, communications or records, all of which are characterized by some kind of ignorance resulting in some incomplete specification of the system." p.337
Therefore, coarse-graining must generate entropy which is essentially the logarithm of the ignorance, i.e. the number of microscopic states that correspond to the given coarse-grained state. So is this idea of entropy objective or subjective? It sure looks subjective, yet in ordinary thermodynamics dS = dQ/T which is objective independent of the knowledge of an observer. So there is a problem here.
"Yet as Gell-Mann and Hartle say, we have the impression that the universe exhibits a finer grained, presumably objective and observer-independent set of decohering histories. These should make possible the definition of what they call a quasi-classical world governed approximately by classical laws. ... Gell-Mann and Hartle feel that this quasi-classical world should follow from the initial conditions of the universe and the Hamiltonian, with the aid of the projection operators ... they would like to find a way to make the question of the existence of a quasi-classical domain into a calculable question in quantum cosmology. ... they have not solved this problem to their satisfaction ... their idea of a quasi-classical history is closely related to that of a broad wave packet in ordinary quantum mechanics. As is well known, the centre of such a packet follows the laws of classical physics, while the packet spreads out very slowly, so that it resembles somewhat a classical particle moving through space, at least for some time. However, Gell-Mann and Hartle describe this process differently by means of a set of projection operators P ... the product P(t1)P(t2) is large only when P(t2) represents a coarse-grained region whose centre is displaced to that corresponding to P(t1) by p(t2-t1)/m ... It is clear then that products like P(t1)P(t2) ... will be large only for histories in which the centres of the regions concerned are located more or less along the classical trajectories implied by the initial wave packet. What has been gained by this procedure is that we have the possibility of obtaining a definite sequence of actual events ... in spite of the spread of wave packets. However, what we in fact get is a whole set of possible sequences of actual events in which the probability will be large only for those sequences that are close to the classical trajectories. ... But there are certain problems ... it is necessary not to make the history so fine-grained that the assumption of their existence would significantly disagree with the predictions of current quantum mechanics in the domain that the latter has been found to be valid ... This can be achieved by going to extremely coarse-grained projection operators ... On the other hand, we must not have a graining so coarse that it does not define the classical domain to any significant extent ... So we have to assume that the degree of coarse-graining is somehow objectively determinate ...." p.338
This would also make the entropy generated by coarse-graining into an objective physical quantity rather than an impression in a mind. On the other hand if entropy really has both an objective and a subjective side, that would suggest a mechanism for paranormal psychokinesis. This is the sort of remark that makes conventional physicists howl! :-)
"This means of course, that it is being assumed that quantum mechanics does break down when we reach this quasi-classical coarse-grained level. ... Gell-Mann and Hartle are not satisfied with assuming that there is simple universal coarse graining that is fixed, the same for all circumstances. ... systems at high temperature can be given a much more fine grained description than is possible for systems at low temperatures without introducing any practically observerable deviations from the quantum laws. ... They have considered various information-theoretic measures of what they call the classicity of a given domain, which they hope will ultimately yield the precise definition of a quasi-classical world as a whole. ... they do not feel ... they have solved this problem ... But even if they could solve it, it would still require a basic new assumption in their approach going beyond the current quantum theory ... it will still have to have some kind of scale factor that determines the actual degree of objective course graining of the classical world under any given set of circumstances. This world corresponds ... to a similar assumption that has been made by GRW. For they too have to assume that quantum mechanics breaks down at some level, but in a way that is unimportant for all practical purposes. This sort of requirement is also characteristic of all forms of the many-worlds interpretation as Deutsch has indeed suggested. For in assuming a preferred basis in which the universe actually splits, they are inevitably implying a breakdown of the quantum theory." pp338-9
So it can be said that the Einstein-Bohr debate is finally over with neither the clear winner in a draw. Einstein was right that orthodox quantum mechanics is "incomplete", God does not really play craps with the universe. There is an objective reality "out there" at least in an important approximate context-dependent sense which leaves open the possibility of Bohms larger "super-implicate orders". However, Bohr was right to emphasize "wholeness" which in Bohms ontology has the features of "nonlocality", "form-dependence", "intensity independence", "active information" and "objective wholeness" -- terms defined in detail by Bohm and Hiley. When it comes to jumping beyond current quantum theory we are led to Stuart Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" in the fundamental low-energy fabric of physical reality and we are led to the demystification of "mind", "consciousness", "free will", "intent", "Destiny", "purpose" with the integration of sentience as a physical post-quantum field of active information which acts on, and is acted on by, the Bohm beables which are the particles and force-fields of classical physics. There is a clear objective distinction between inanimate matter described by orthodox quantum theory and animate matter described by its generalization "post-quantum mechanics". One can call orthodox quantum mechanics "the special theory of the quantum" and post-quantum mechanics "the general theory of the quantum" where the "quantum" is "alive" in the general theory. Backactivity in quantum theory is analogous to curvature in Einsteins theory of relativity. Backactivity can be thought of as a nonlinear "bending" of Hilbert space in much the same way that curvature is the bending of space-time.
The "IGUS" and all that -- measurement and the observer in G-MH
Like Bohm and Hiley, Stapp, Penrose, GRW et-al G-MH "regard measurement as a special case of a general process in the universe". All of the semi-viable post-quantum theories, in contrast to Wigners view, for example, have this ontological objective of divorcing consciousness from an essential role in the evolution and measuring of inanimate systems. This, however, as I have said, does not preclude explaining consciousness as a post-quantum physical phenomenon entirely within the extended laws of the really new physics now emerging at the close of the Twentieth Century.
Bohm and Hiley write:
"When a correlation exists between the ranges of values of two operators of a quasi-classical world, there is what [G-MH] ... call a measurement situation. If the correlation has probability near unity, then the range of values of the one can be deduced from that of the other. All this is, of course, objective and independent of the observer. The above however discusses only measurements in the quasi-classical world. What about measurements of essentially quantum mechanical operators such as spin? Of course the spin states will not in general decohere by themselves. But in a measurement situation the different spin states are correlated with different classical histories. And these latter, of course, do decohere. The decoherence of the overall state will thus bring about the decoherence of the spin states that have been measured. This is very similar to what happens in our own interpretation, in which the non-overlap of the apparatus wave functions guarantees that there will be no interference between the spin states. In both cases the usual rules for probability will be recovered." p.339
Note, under condition of post-quantum mechanics when this kind of decoherence is screened out, one expects a distortion away from the Born rules for probability. This is a sufficient condition for nonlocal communication as shown in the Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation of Valentini (Dennis Sciama was the dissertation advisor.)
"The observers memory, awareness, etc should, in principle, be included in the density matrix of the universe and it should also have some representation in terms of operators in the quasi-classical world. However, it is not enough to consider what happens at a given moment or period of of history. It is necessary to consider how a set of observers might have evolved from the initial state of the universe." p.339
Aharonov suggests that it may also be necessary to consider the final state of the universe.
"To discuss this question, Gell-Mann and Hartle refer to an observer as an information gathering and utilization system (IGUS).
I say that G-MH do not really succeed in defining the IGUS properly. In order to do that we need to introduce "spontaneous self-organization" upon which Darwinian natural selection acts as explained by Stuart Kauffman. My post-quantum backactivity idea is what is required to accomplish this at the fundamental low-energy limit of physical reality which is coarse-grained far above the Planck scale although remnants of that scale play a profound role if Penrose is correct.
"They claim that such a system can in principle be treated in terms of quantum mechanics as these authors have formulated it."
My point here is that the IGUS is a post-quantum phenomenon not an orthodox quantum phenomenon. Insofar as G-MH need to go beyond orthodox theory, which they must do as Bohm and Hiley point out, they may succeed in a very obscure way. My picture of the IGUS in terms of a feedback-control loop between quantum mind and classical material beable, i.e. Eccles Gate brain subsystem in the microtubules, is much more precise and easy to visualize qualitatively. It ties into general notions of Norbert Weiners "cybernetics" as well as the latest notions of neural net theory and evolutionary biology since post-Bohmian mechanics has a natural morphing "fitness landscape" upon which the Eccles Gate beable moves. The motion of the Eccles gate through the fitness landscape in turn changes it and this is the feedback-control loop that yields Stuart Kauffmans "spontaneous self-organization" at the most fundamental physical level -- below that of his autocatalytic molecular networks.
"That is to say, in some form of approximation, no matter how crude, an IGUS is said to employ this form of quantum mechanics in a self-referential way." p.340
The key word here is, obviously, "self-referential" and my above picture is a very vivid and clear way to see intuitively the precise sense in which the new post-quantum mechanics is "self-referential" in the sense of "self-organizing" and "sentient". Post-quantum mechanics is the physics of sentient self-organizing complex systems. Indeed, as Lee Smolin has seen "through the glass darkly" (e.g. The Life of the Cosmos), the universe as a whole is an IGUS.
"The possibility of this is based on the assumption that memory content, and that to which it refers, are correlated by the laws of quantum theory as applied in this cosmological context" p.340
Change "quantum theory" to "post-quantum theory" in the above sentence.
"It is further assumed by the authors that these laws provide for the evolution of IGUSs in such a way that these latter can make predictions and draw further inferences about the probabilities of coarse-grained histories." p.340
This is beginning to sound like Isaac Asimovs notion of "psycho-history" in The Foundation Trilogy.
"It is argued that this capacity was maintained and developed because it was favorable to their survival. The reason why IGUSs focus on decohering variables is that, at least within this theory, these are the only variables for which predictions can be made." ibid.
What does it mean for the IGUS to "focus on". Is there a choice? Does it depend on the state of consciousness. For example, does the Shaman in a trance, or Picasso or Van Gough or Dali doing a painting, or Gregory Corso writing a poem, or John Lilly under ketamine, or Terrence McKenna rhapsodizing, focus on the same "variables" as does Murray Gell-Mann when he is lecturing to an audience of physicists and financial contributers to his Santa Fe Institute? This is actually a serious issue in the G-MH theory. This is also related to the fact that there are no pre-assigned interactions between the beables in the Bohm theory in the quantum and post-quantum domains. Remember mind is in the post-quantum domain.
"In addition they focus on the histories of a quasi-classical world, because these present enough regularity over time to permit prediction by relatively rudimentary algorithms that are easily evolved. Gell-Mann and Hartle thus effectively extend Darwinism and propose a possible basis for it in the laws of quantum mechanics." p.340
G-MH are correct in connecting Darwinism to orthodox quantum mechanics. That is precisely where it is in my Bohmian picture of post-quantum mechanics. It is here that Stuart Kauffmans insight that Darwinism must be based upon a more fundamental "spontaneous self-organization" that one finds the necessity for post-quantum backactivity which gives the real physics of the G-MH IGUS.
"If there are many significantly different quasi-classical worlds (as seems to be suggested in the many-universes point of view) one should better say that the IGUS evolves to exploit a particular quasi-classical world or set of such worlds." ibid.
What does it mean to "exploit". Have we a choice here? Are the different "quasi-classical worlds" like Carlos Castenadas "separate realities". Change your neurochemical parameters to experience a different quasi-classical preferred basis? Can it be that the different IGUSs are not all in the same basis? There must be some overlap for them to cooperate in society. This is relevant to the problem of social violence. It is also relevant to the ideas of Thomas Kuhn on paradigm shifts. Take the cultural clash between believers in the paranormal and UFOs on the one hand, and the official skeptics like Martin Gardner, Amazin Randi, Leon Jaroff, Vic Stenger et-al, on the other. Are the two camps experiencing different preferred bases sets of the many worlds that are askew from each other -- but which still overlap? Modern civilization permits deviant algorithms to evolve that do not threaten the physical survival of the IGUSs as Hobbess earlier "state of nature" which was "nasty, short and brutish" did. Along with the evolution of complexity we find a proliferation of tolerance for deviant behavior. Nazism was a backlash to this, for example. Nazism did not survive for very long. (One of the few things I remember from Cornell in the 50s was reading Thomas Hobbess "The Leviathan" and Hannah Arendt on "The Banality of Evil".)
"This implies, of course, that the IGUS, including the human being, occupies no special place and plays no preferred role in the laws of physics." ibid.
I am not sure if I agree with this. In one sense I do, and, in another, I dont. I do agree that post-quantum physics provides a universal criterion for any sentient being, not necessarily carbon-based like we are. On the other hand, all sentient beings are "two-way" post-quantum phenomena beyond the domain of orthodox quantum phenomena which only applies to simpler non-sentient "one way" levels of organization of quantum fields of nonlocal active information and their attached classical beables.
"This [G-MH] approach is in some sense closely related to certain forms of the anthropic principle. Bringing in the evolution of the IGUS plays a key part in how the theory of Gell-Mann and Hartle deals with measurement situations. For example ... the mutually exclusive character of of simultaneous position and momentum measurements ... What this means ... is that the history in which one observer, as part of the universe, sets up a measurement correlation [note "correlation" is in the sense of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, here are correlation of tiny observed to big apparatus -- Sarfatti] to the momentum, p, and one in which he does this for the position, q, are represented by two sets of decohering operators which are, however, mutually exclusive alternatives. The decoherence is established by by interacting with a thermal bath or with the 3K background radiation or with something similar. [It is the screening out of this external decoherence, in a sentient system, that allows the backactivity, e.g. self-objective reduction of GRW, to work for a long enough time for a given number N of parts of the coherent whole, e.g. Penroses use of the term "isolation" in the microtubules -- Sarfatti] Since these are mutually exclusive alternative possibilities for the the universe as a whole, only one of them can be realized at a time in the development of the universe. Or more precisely, only one of them can arise in on a particular branch of the evolution of the universe as a whole. They say however that the choice of branch may ultimately be traceable to a quantum fluctuation that sets in motion a chain of events leading to one measurement situation or the other." p.340
So are these initial quantum fluctuations really irreducibly random? They need not be, and they can be engineered from the future inside that universe if post-quantum mechanics is the correct picture of physical reality. This is an argument for intelligent design of the initial conditions of our universe in a self-consistent loop in time. Charles Bennett in his papers on "Precausal Quantum Mechanics" (Phys Rev A) shows how past quantum fluctuations have advanced causes from the future. Fred Hoyle suggests the same in his book, The Intelligent Universe (1986). These are spin-offs from the Wheeler-Feynman action at a distance classical electrodynamics. Engineering the quantum fluctuations is possible without the total absorber final condition.
"Some have even suggested that the human subjective impression of free will may be traceable to statistical or quantum fluctuations." ibid.
This is a kind of passive fatalistic superdetermined view which is inherent both in classical physics and in orthodox quantum mechanics. It is not the case in the post-quantum backactivity self-organizing model I introduce. There we have self-determined decisions based on both past memory and precognitive future data inputs to the feedback-control loop between quantum mind and classical body -- which happen at the subconscious level.
"... according to this [G-MH] view, the universe evolved first to give rise to matter, then to life, and ultimately to human beings along with their societies, sciences, measuring instruments etc. Eventually in this evolution there appeared a physicist who set up a momentum measuring device and established a correlation between the subsequent history of this process and the momentum of a quantum system at time t. It seems inescapable that the physicists impression that he freely chose to set this measuring instrument up would have to be illusory at least in terms of this theory. For in this theory nothing whatsoever can happen unless it is part of the evolution of a suitable branch of the history of the universe as a whole." p.341
This is the basic incompleteness in G-MH. They are stuck in a passive fatalistic super-determined model of "pre-established harmony" of the universe because they have not recognized the role of post-quantum self-organization which is compatible with a coherent superposition of both pre and post-established harmony in the sense of Aharonov. That is, their purely retarded post-quantum model is not really self-consistent, it is certainly not complete, because they do not have the Bohm beable which is absolutely required. One can say, that Bohms ontology is the only basis for a post-quantum physics that introduces self-organization in a clear intuitive visualizable way.
Bohm and Hiley explain Gell-Manns main idea of fatalistic contingent superdeterminism (violating "counter-factuality") in Chapter 12 of the latters The Quark and the Jaguar, i.e., nonlocality is not required to understand the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) effect, in a much clearer way. The role of "free will" is made explicit. The philosophical problem of freedom is now an essential part of the really new physics. It becomes obvious that free will requires objective nonlocal faster-than-light controllable post-quantum action at a distance with a robust quantum potential stabilized by feedback-control between pilot-wave and beable. Orthodox quantum action at a distance, in contrast, is uncontrollable because of a fragile quantum potential and, therefore, cannot be used for faster-than-light communication. Thus, Bohm and Hiley wrote:
"Similar considerations may be applied to the EPR-type of experiment ...there may arise a molecule of spin zero, constituted of two atoms of spin hbar/2, along with a physicist who sets up an instrument designed to disintegrate the molecule and to measure suitable components of the spins of the two atoms. The fact, for example, that he has apparently chosen to measure the z-component of one of them was somehow implicit from the very early phases of the universe." p.341
Remember, that Hoyle and Bennett trace the initial quantum fluctuations of the Big Bang to advanced influences from the far future of the universe in a "self-excited circuit". There is a violation of what David Deutsch calls the "fundamental principle of the philosophy of science" -- so much for the "philosophy of science"! :-)
"Once this choice began to unfold from the primeval explosion, then there coud never be any question of what would happen if the universe had developed in such a way as to bring about a measurement of some other component of the spin. Recall however that the paradoxical features of the EPR experiment arose because one assumed that before the measurement took place, it was always possible for the observer to [freely] choose an arbitrary component of the spin. If this choice has no meaning then all the conclusions commonly drawn from the EPR experiment will not follow. For example, the same quantum fluctuation from which emerged the physicists choice to measure the z-component of the spin of one of the atoms, will also have given rise to the choice to measure a certain component of the spin of the second particle along with the correlation of the results of the two measurements. Or as Bell has put it, there is a complete rapport established at the very beginning of the universe between the net results and the total measurement situation including the physicists who set the experiment up and carry it out. Some people have called this sort of situation the denial of the counterfactual. But what the theory of Gell-Mann and Hartle adds is an explanation showing why this denial follows necessarily from their model of the universe."
So Gell-Mann is willing to pay a high price for the excision of the superluminal demon. He is willing to sacrifice the freedom of the human spirit as an illusion and to call objective nonlocality "the story distorted". However, his error is that he is using the picture of orthodox quantum theory in his attempt to make a post-quantum theory. That is, his strategy is not self-consistent.
Bohm and Hiley (BH) compare G-MH to their theory in 14.5.6. Both G-MH and BH do agree that the quantum wave function (or density matrix if the wave function itself is uncertain so that there is thermodynamic entropy) is not a complete description of physical reality. BH use "beables" to make the description complete. These beables are the elementary point particles and their force fields in classical physics. In addition there may be sub-quantal "hidden variables" which are not the same as these beables. Stenger glosses over this important difference in his book, The Unconscious Quantum.
"Thus we bring in what we have called beables, which are either precisely defined particle trajectories or precisely defined motions of the field variables." p.342
G-MH do not have "beables", instead they have "coarse-grained projection operators out of which they construct sets of alternative histories" added to the initial density matrix of the universe. The quantum evolution equation for the wave function is linear. If the wave function is a complete description, this means that it is impossible to have definite actual events unless one adds a "collapse", or, alternatively, a many-worlds, interpretive postulate. The wave equation is effectively nonlinear in GRW and in the backactivity picture. Both G-MH and BH explain the classical world as part of the quantum world instead of existing apriori as in Bohrs Copenhagen interpretation. Bohrs idea is not good for quantum cosmology.
"although their projection operators are new concepts relative to the quantum theory in its current generally accepted form, they are nevertheless ... still expressible as operators defined on a Hilbert space. On the other hand, our [beable] particle and field variables are not expressed as such operators in Hilbert space. Rather they are new concepts going outside this framework of Hilbert space altogether." p.342
Bohm and Hiley now hammer the final nail into the over on the G-MH coffin. :-)
"In our approach once we have assumed particle and field beables, no further fundamental assumptions are needed, nor as we have seen, are there serious problems involving the basic principles. Indeed even the probability assumption may be derived ... either from the chaotic character of the trajectories in the many-body system or from a stochastic process. The quasi-classical world ,,,, we have called the manifest world comes out simply and naturally as that domain in which the quantum potential can be neglected. There is no sharp break between the quantum world and the classical world, but only a continual increase in the classicity of the behvior, as we approach the domains in which the quantum potential becomes less and less important. On the other hand in the approach of Gell-Mann and Hartle, the simple assumption that sequences of projection operators correspond to actual trajectories is not enough. In addition ... one has to assume an objective limit to the degree of fine grainedness of these operators. And besides, there is still the unresolved problem of finding a functional form for this limit that is suitable for all circumstances. A further conceptual unclarity in their approach is that the reality status of the wave function or density matrix is, at best, highly ambiguous. It would seem from what they have written that everything that is actual and real is contained in the quasi-classical world. This seems strange because all the basic physical properties do in fact come out of the wave functions (or the density matrix). Should not this therefore be regarded as a key factor of reality (as indeed it is in our interpretation)? This ambiguity in the reality status of the wave function ... is a residue of the separation of the quantum world of the wave function and the classical world of the measuring instrument that was originally assumed by von Neumann ... The basic role of the observing instrument is now replaced by a similar role for the coarse-grained projection operators. Of course, the ambiguity in the cut between the measuring instrument and what is observed, has been removed because the latter has been given a universal significance (i.e. the universe contains a set of coarse-grained projection operators that in effect are constantly carrying out measurements in a unique and objective way). Nevertheless there still remains the fundamental split between the two kinds of reality which many would feel to be undesirable. ... Finally we would like to call attention to a more subtle difference .... In our interpretation, it is always, in principle, possible that there may be a modification coming from outside the framework that we consider. For example, in the EPR experiment we supposed the observer could arbitrarily choose to reorient the apparatus while the atoms were separating. Let us recall that it is this assumption which originally made the EPR experiment seem paradoxical and which ultimately led to the conclusion that there had to be a [faster-than-light] nonlocal connection between the atoms. In this case the modification might have been due to what has been called the free will of the experimenter ... the central question here is not that of free will, but rather that of whether anything is possible that has a certain independence of the quantum mechanical framework ... The assumption of free will would imply such a case of independence ... On the other hand in the interpretation of Gell-Mann and Hartle it is ... impossible for anything to happen that could not in principle be covered by some kind of extension of this theory based on the concept of Hilbert space plus the notion of the evolution of the universe that they have proposed. From this it follows that everything that could happen would, in principle, be implicit from the earliest phases of the universe .... nothing independent of the whole scheme can come in to alter the course of cosmic evolution ... even ... the determination of the orientation of a piece of apparatus ... was implicit in the quantum fluctuations of the early universe ... it is this feature that removes nonlocality, but the cost is closure of our thinking, which, in our view, has no ground in fact and which may limit the development of our ideas in a counterproductive way." pp 343-5
I wonder if Gell-Mann was even aware that his theory implied a return to the classical Laplacian determinism and the clockwork universe, so rigid, as to make The Inquisition, the Gestapo, and Orwells though police in "1984", seem relatively liberal and tolerant! Gell-Manns cruel God not only watches the fall of every sparrow, but did not allow His Creation any free will at all. The situation is very different in post-quantum mechanics because of self-organization. One can inquire as to whether "precognitive remote viewing", i.e. advanced signal inputs into the self-organizing feedback-control loop, would return us to G-MH superdetermined totalitarian nighmare reality? The point here is that the alleged future data influencing present self-organized behavior of sentient systems is highly coarse-grained and incomplete not touching on every detail as in the case of G-MH. True, with the advent of practical nonlocal communications backward in time, and with traversable wormhole time machines, one could imagine special situations in which the free-will of the participants to take certain specific actions that would cause a paradox would be restricted by the globally self-consistent loops in time set up by such an advanced super-technology.