# Quantum Mechanics and Mind **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 11, 2017, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322 "2017-08-11T07:49:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/21 "2017-08-11T15:10:21Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > …and your point is? > > If modern neurologists have any explanation for consciousness that would be quite some news. > > [The empty brain](https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer) > By Dr Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California, and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. > > \*\*\*Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer \*\*\* > [Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness) > > _ **Philosophers and scientists have been at war for decades over the question of what makes human beings more than complex robots** _ > > [All machine and no ghost?](http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2012/02/consciousness-mind-brain) > > _ **The more we look at the brain, the less it looks like a device for creating consciousness. Perhaps philosophers will never be able to solve the mystery.** _ I don’t know of any neuroscientific conclusion that claims, “It’s complicated and we don’t have all the answers; Therefore, God!” ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/22 "2017-08-11T15:14:42Z")
Another one: [The Case Against Reality](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/) Donald D. Hoffman, a _ **professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine** _. Hoffman has spent the past three decades studying perception, artificial intelligence, evolutionary game theory and the brain, and his conclusion is a dramatic one: The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality. _“Nevertheless, for now I don’t think we are machines—in part because I distinguish between the mathematical representation and the thing being represented. As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm.”_ An interesting discussion of the ‘[philosophical zombie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie)’ problem. [Mary and the Zombies: Can Science Explain Consciousness?](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/mary-and-the-zombies-can-science-explain-consciousness/) [Mary and the Zombies: Consciousness Revisited](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/mary-and-the-zombies-consciousness-revisited/?ref=opinion) _“Reflecting on the discussion overall, my conclusion is that neither the Mary nor the Zombie Argument makes a decisive case against physicalism. But the arguments do not make obvious, stupid mistakes. They are based on premises with a great deal of intuitive appeal (that science can’t tell us what red looks like subjectively and that a zombie is logically possible), and these premises seem to lead quite directly to the conclusion that consciousness is non-physical. That by no means settles the issue. We need to examine much more carefully both the apparently obvious premises and the reasoning based on them.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/23 "2017-08-11T16:00:55Z")
> [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > I was taught quantum on the Copenhagen Interpretation, and it was specifically stated that this interpretation puts the observer on a pedestal of sorts. > > I’ve since learned that there are more than one ways of viewing quantum. Some of these have been discussed in other threads of the OP’s. Many worlds and pilot wave were mentioned a few days ago, but Abashed has oped a lot of threads lately, so I can’t remember which. (Aside: It is nice to see Abashed post here- s/he has lots of questions, which is only natural when first exploring these ideas. I sense that these questions are posed in good faith, based on Abashed’s responses.) > > I saw a nice discussion by Penrose, where he lays bare the problems of taking Copenhagen too far and requiring consciousness to make quantum work at all. I’ll try to reproduce it as best I can. > > There are exoplanets, and presumably there are some with atmosphere, but no life (or at least no sufficiently conscious life). If we were to visit that planet, we might find patterns of weather. (actually, this has already happened for us , at least on Mars and Titan, and could be said to apply to any feature we have seen on any moon or planet we have looked at.) These large structures a presumably affected in some way by the numerous quantum ‘decisions’ at play, especially weather, which is a chaotic system, very sensitive to tiny changes. > > This is all happening without any conscious observers. Or you must imagine that the planet is a blank slate, waiting for an observer before it can have any weather patterns or features. While quantum is weird, that one is a heavy lift, and the many worlds interpretation becomes a bit less heavy after contemplating that. I agree, but you don’t even need to go off planet for it - geology right here on earth happened without anyone watching it. Unless we’re in a simulation with rendering limitations, the ground beneath my feet is already the way it is, before I dig down there to take a look. I mean, I can’t prove that without digging, and it could be asserted that I’m just wrong and the soil substrata here are being created by my act of observing them, but there is just no good reason for it to be that way. Occam’s razor applies to that. ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/24 "2017-08-11T16:21:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And what calculations lead you to this conclusion? > > If you can’t do calculations with quantum mechanics, then you can’t do _anything_ with quantum mechanics. Yes, I know that this is frustrating. Most of physics really can be understood intuitively, and with a sufficiently-developed intuition, one can come up with useful results, at least qualitatively, without calculation. And it’s understandable that this lures people to think they can do the same with quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, we can’t. Nobody, not even Nobel-winning physicists who did their greatest work in quantum mechanics, has an intuitive understanding of it, and hence any attempt at intuitive work in quantum mechanics is doomed to failure. I respect this point of view _but_ you must not forget that even mathematics is based partly on intuition and partly on rules that originate from the physical world. For example, greater than, less than, equal to, not equal to, etc. Now these ideas are really just common sense to us and we have combined them symbolically to represent patterns we observe in nature but the question is how do we derive such patterns? The answer, of course, is from experiments and our perceptions of such experiments. In other words, we interpret what our senses tell us into something that can be fitted into some paradigm or other. But isn’t this just really expressing our subjective experiences of something into a symbolic form that really has its roots in the ‘conventional’ world? So it would be a reasonable conclusion then to say we cannot really understand the nature of QM unless we are prepared to forget about our pre-conceptions, which once did serve us well in the ‘macro’ world, and adopt an entirely new approach that displaces materialism as the central source of reality and replaces it with ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ as the main dynamic. In the Schrodinger’s cat scenario (as you are probably aware of) a cat could be either dead or alive until an observer looks to see which. The idea being the cat is _both_ dead and alive when unobserved. This begs the question of whether the cat itself can act as an observer to determine its state or whether another observer is required. But that just leads nowhere as you, as an observer, are in the same situation as the cat, not knowing whether you are, in fact, dead or alive until yet a further observer looks at you, and so on, infinitum. So none of us can really know whether we are either dead or alive unless there is some kind of ‘universal consciousness’ independent of us that somehow is always observing us and transcends physical reality. This universal consciousness must have been about at the beginning of the universe otherwise by what means did the quantum waveform function collapse into a physical universe? . ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/25 "2017-08-11T16:28:51Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > We describe the universe because it exists, not the other way around. But what is it that exists? The only thing we know exists is ideas about existence so are ideas real? And if the universe isn’t experienced can it exist at all? ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/26 "2017-08-11T16:30:24Z")
Some excellent contributions so far. Thank you. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/27 "2017-08-11T16:31:08Z")
Your entire argument appears to hinge on a misunderstanding that a quantum observer must be a conscious person. This is not correct. When two particles collide, they ‘observe’ each other. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/28 "2017-08-11T16:32:59Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I agree, but you don’t even need to go off planet for it - geology right here on earth happened without anyone watching it. Unless we’re in a simulation with rendering limitations, the ground beneath my feet is already the way it is, before I dig down there to take a look. > > I mean, I can’t prove that without digging, and it could be asserted that I’m just wrong and the soil substrata here are being created by my act of observing them, but there is just no good reason for it to be that way. Occam’s razor applies to that. Yes. Also fossil history of earth, both pre-life and pre-conscious life. Also, what’s going on in your computer when you’re not looking (unless you consider your computer conscious). Really, a strict Copenhagener could just invoke big and bigger boxes to hold all these cats, but it doesn’t sit well with me. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/29 "2017-08-11T16:33:19Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > But what is it that exists? The only thing we know exists is ideas about existence so are ideas real? And if the universe isn’t experienced can it exist at all? Yes! Or else how did we get here to start experiencing it? Really, this is just ‘if a tree falls…’ stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/30 "2017-08-11T16:35:00Z")
> [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > Really, a strict Copenhagener could just invoke big and bigger boxes to hold all these cats, but it doesn’t sit well with me. Well, indeed, and the speed of information transfer means that in a very real sense, the bit of the universe we live in, is an unopened box to other parts of the universe, so we are in an undetermined state. it doesn’t feel like it from this seat. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/31 "2017-08-11T16:35:29Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > I respect this point of view _but_ you must not forget that even mathematics is based partly on intuition and partly on rules that originate from the physical world. For example, greater than, less than, equal to, not equal to, etc. Now these ideas are really just common sense to us and we have combined them symbolically to represent patterns we observe in nature but the question is how do we derive such patterns? The answer, of course, is from experiments and our perceptions of such experiments. In other words, we interpret what our senses tell us into something that can be fitted into some paradigm or other. But isn’t this just really expressing our subjective experiences of something into a symbolic form that really has its roots in the ‘conventional’ world? So it would be a reasonable conclusion then to say we cannot really understand the nature of QM unless we are prepared to forget about our pre-conceptions, which once did serve us well in the ‘macro’ world, and adopt an entirely new approach that displaces materialism as the central source of reality and replaces it with ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ as the main dynamic. > > In the Schrodinger’s cat scenario (as you are probably aware of) a cat could be either dead or alive until an observer looks to see which. The idea being the cat is _both_ dead and alive when unobserved. This begs the question of whether the cat itself can act as an observer to determine its state or whether another observer is required. But that just leads nowhere as you, as an observer, are in the same situation as the cat, not knowing whether you are, in fact, dead or alive until yet a further observer looks at you, and so on, infinitum. So none of us can really know whether we are either dead or alive unless there is some kind of ‘universal consciousness’ independent of us that somehow is always observing us and transcends physical reality. This universal consciousness must have been about at the beginning of the universe otherwise by what means did the quantum waveform function collapse into a physical universe? > > . Beware solipsism. It has its attractions, but it is ultimately infertile. No cite, just my opinion, also held by others. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/32 "2017-08-11T16:39:47Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > In the Schrodinger’s cat scenario (as you are probably aware of) a cat could be either dead or alive until an observer looks to see which. The idea being the cat is _both_ dead and alive when unobserved. This begs the question of whether the cat itself can act as an observer to determine its state or whether another observer is required. But that just leads nowhere as you, as an observer, are in the same situation as the cat, not knowing whether you are, in fact, dead or alive until yet a further observer looks at you, and so on, infinitum. So none of us can really know whether we are either dead or alive unless there is some kind of ‘universal consciousness’ independent of us that somehow is always observing us and transcends physical reality. This universal consciousness must have been about at the beginning of the universe otherwise by what means did the quantum waveform function collapse into a physical universe? You _do_ know that the Schrodinger’s cat scenario was created by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 to show the inanity of trying to apply quantum mechanics to everyday life, right? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/33 "2017-08-11T16:41:03Z")
> [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > Beware solipsism. It has its attractions, but it is ultimately infertile. > > No cite, just my opinion, also held by others. Why are you listening to _others_? They’re just puppets. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/34 "2017-08-11T16:56:47Z")
Attempts to link human conscience and quantum mechanics often leave me annoyed. Both very complicated and not fully understood phenomena (least of all by me), that get conflated by people who seem to understand neither and for no explicable reason other than pseudo-scientific fapping. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/35 "2017-08-11T17:14:11Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Why are you listening to _others_? They’re just puppets. I listen to the “Voices”, as I called them, because they seem to me to be at least as real as I am. I hear them in MY head, after all. You, on the other hand, I can safely ignore. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/36 "2017-08-11T17:14:21Z")
If you want a cold, hard factual answer then the best answer IMO is that the problem of whether consciousness plays a role in quantum mechanics is unresolved. ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/37 "2017-08-11T17:23:06Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Your entire argument appears to hinge on a misunderstanding that a quantum observer must be a conscious person. This is not correct. When two particles collide, they ‘observe’ each other. That would suggest that when two particles interact there is a spontaneous reduction of the wavefunction which is not the case. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/38 "2017-08-11T17:23:12Z")
Did the Earth exist before there were lifeforms on it to notice its existence? Geologists and paleontologists seem to agree that it did, so are they wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/39 "2017-08-11T17:28:56Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Did the Earth exist before there were lifeforms on it to notice its existence? Geologists and paleontologists seem to agree that it did, so are they wrong? Some would say it was in a giant box, waiting to be opened. I don’t buy that, as I said above. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2017, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322/40 "2017-08-11T17:32:35Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > So none of us can really know whether we are either dead or alive unless there is some kind of ‘universal consciousness’ independent of us that somehow is always observing us and transcends physical reality. But who observes the observer? It’s cats all the way down. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quantum-mechanics-and-mind/793322.md?page=3)