🚀 go-pugleaf

>Article 46242 (971 more) in sci.physics:
>From: John.Brawley@p1.f9.n8012.z86.toadnet.org (John Brawley)

>Subject: Will is a physical force?
>Date: Mon, 03 May 1993 13:48:41 -0600
Lines: 142

>V Headshape wrote to All...

 VH> From: sharvy@reed.edu (V Headshape)
 VH> Organization: Reed College, Portland, OR
 VH> 
 VH> What causes the various electrons and whatnots in my brain to move
 VH> when I make a decision? It must be a physical force, eh?

>the various "electrons and whatnot in [your] brain" _ARE_ 'you' "making a 
>decision," 

I would say that it is the intelligent patterns of nonlocal correlation of 
the electron spins that is US

>This is the excellent area where "free will" interfaces with the
>physicality of the brain, which _is_, in a real sense, the only
>place where physiology can contribute to the "mind/body" (really
>mind/brain) "problem."

Agreed.

>There is one way, and only one, given science's understanding of
>physical reality, to resolve the problem of which came first;
>the thought, or the electron/whatever motion, and that is to
>get the interface between mind and brain partially free of
>time."  

If you use the formalism of Bohm's quantum potential (ref: Quantum 
Implications edited by Hiley and Peat), the wave function is real and 
separate from the particle. The mind is then the wave function which 
influences the particle by the highly nonlocal context dependent gradients 
in the quantum potential. The quantum potential is not only a function in 
classical phase space but has an additional Hilbert space dependence beyond 
phase space.

>That is, in no 'physical' sense can it be said you have
>"free will."  Nature, in spite of quantum mechanical randomness,
>is deterministic in this application.  (Randomness isn't an
>acceptable parameter of conscious "will.")  

The ideas of quantum randomness are pre-chaos/fractal theory. There may well 
be hidden but measurable orders in the seemingly random quantum time series. 
No one has really looked yet. In the Bohm formalism we have Hamilton-Jacobi 
equations in phase space with the added Hilbert space dependent quantum 
potential (the seat of the soul?) so that the whole thing is highly 
nonlinear as well as nonlocal from the classical mechanical point of view. 
It would be hard to imagine that chaos with new kinds on nonlocal strange 
attractors in phase space would not happen! We need supercomputers to 
explore this in toy models.

>However, in no subjective _mental_ sense is it acceptable to say that "we"
>do not _initiate_ a process in the brain.  Where's the resolution?
>IMHO, this is what drives Penrose et.al. to propose EPR-type
>nonlocal connections within the brain as root of consciousness.
>I disagree in particular, agree in essence.  I think that the
>nonlocal connection idea, being utterly devoid of "sequentiality"
>(simultaneity, as in EPR/Bell and others, is not 'causal' in
>this sense), is usable as the fundamental underlying enabler
>of "free will," but not that it explains _consciousness_ any
>more than that.  

I do not think your are correct here. You are confusing "causal" in the 
physics sense of no superluminal influences (i.e., operators must commute 
across spacelike intervals) with the more general idea of cause as encoder 
of a message and effect as decoder. The nature of the information in the 
message clearly defines the cause. For example, if you receive detailed 
stock market prices for next week and it happens every time and the 
information proves correct, then, there is no question that the cause is in 
the future.

>The ultimate residing place of consciousness appears to be in chaotic 
>interactions between pre-existing evolutionarily-developed information-
>handling systems, 

These systems will prove, I predict, to be quantum mechanical in the essence 
of their operation. That is, classical approximations will not do the job.

>What happens between this collective nonlocal construct and the
>possible-but-impossible-to-prove equally nonlocal consciousness
>of the universe as a whole ("God") is anybody's guess...
>It sure would explain why it's so dam' difficult to get into
>contact with "God," wouldn't it?

I don't have any problem since I chose AT&T.

>Nonlocality _does_ provide us with a unifying
>principle that gets us outside the limits of "sequence,"
>and since there's no question that nonlocality is a feature
>of physical matter, and since there's also no question that
>our brains are made of the same stuff, there should be no
>question that nonlocal effects happen in the brain.  The
only question should be "how _much_ of this is "nonlocal"?"
>or "_what_ in 'consciousness' is explained by nonlocality?"
>The only problem I see with asking these questions is that
>such an investigation is _bound_ to slap religion upside the
>face with science, and vice versa, at their meeting-place in
>the human brain.  Maybe it's time....

Right on brother! Praise The Lord and pass the ammunition. Damn the 
torpedos, full speed ahead. I have not yet begun to fight.

(Stage notes) At this point in the multi-media virtual reality New Physics 
Experience there will be a Gospel Chorus.

>As regards "free will" and the mind/brain problem, 

It's closely connected with quantum delayed choice IMHO.

>we may have to be satisfied with brain not motivating "us" and
>simultaneously "us" not motivating "brain," but rather a
>sort of paradoxical fusion of both things, in the 'spaceless,'
>'timeless' region of nonlocality.  

e.g., Space-Time and Beyond (1975, Dutton) which I am now revising and 
bringing the physics and esp stuff up to date - for a Penguin edition in 
paper and CD ROM.