Philosophy of self

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_self 

The philosophy of self is the study of the many conditions of identity that make one subject of experience distinct from other experiences. The self is sometimes understood as a unified being essentially connected to consciousness, awareness, and agency.

Definitions of the self

Most philosophical definitions of self—per Descartes, Locke, Hume, and William James—are expressed in the first person. A third person definition does not refer to specific mental qualia but instead strives for objectivity and operationalism.

To another person, the self of one individual is exhibited in the conduct and discourse of that individual. Therefore, the intentions of another individual can only be inferred from something that emanates from that individual. The particular characteristics of the self determine its identity.^{[citation needed]}

Concepts of self

Self-knowledge

Main article: Self-knowledge (psychology)

Both Western and Eastern civilizations have been occupied with self-knowledge and underscored its importance particularly citing the paradoxical combination of immediate availability and profound obscurity involved in its pursuit. For Socrates, the goal of philosophy was to "know thyself". Lao Tzu, in his Tao Te Ching, says "Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires force. Mastering the self requires strength." The case is the same for the seers of Upanishads, who maintained that the ultimate real knowledge involves an understanding of the essence of the self and the nature of God. Adi Shankaracharya, in his commentary on Bhagavad Gita says "Self-knowledge alone eradicates misery". "Self-knowledge alone is the means to the highest bliss." Absolute perfection is the consummation of Self-knowledge."

A theory about self-knowledge describes the concept as the capacity to detect that the sensations, thoughts, mental states, and attitudes as one's own. It is linked to other concepts such as self-awareness and self-conception. The rationalist theory, which Immanuel Kant has inspired, also claims that our ability to achieve self-knowledge through rational reflection is partly derived from the fact that we view ourselves as rational agents. This school rejects that self-knowledge is merely derived from observation as it acknowledges the subject as authoritative on account of his ability as an agent to shape his own states.

Self as an activity

Aristotle, following Plato, defined the psyche as the core essence of a living being, and while claiming that it did not exist apart from the body, he considered its so-called "intellect" part to be immortal and perpetual, in contrast to its organism-dependent vegetative/nutritive and perceptual functions. In his theory of causes and of act and potency, Aristotle emphasizes beings in relation to their actual manifestation, and in turn the soul was also defined by its actual effects. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is part of the essence of what it is to be a knife. More precisely, the soul is the "first activity" of a living body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or 'second', activity. "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for rational activity," and the potential for rational activity thus constituted the essence of a human soul. He states: "Soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being besouled", and also "When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal". Aristotle used his concept of the soul in many of his works; his main work on the subject is De Anima (On the Soul).

Aristotle also believed that there were four sections of the soul: the calculative and scientific parts on the rational side used for making decisions, and the desiderative and vegetative parts on the irrational side responsible for identifying our needs. A division of the soul's functions and activities is also found in Plato's tripartite theory. The problem of one in many is also remembered by Aristotle, nonetheless:

If then the soul is of its very nature divisible, what holds it together? Not the body, certainly: much rather the contrary seems to be true, that the soul holds the body together; for when it departs, the body expires and decomposes. If there is some other thing which makes it one, this other is rather the soul. One would then have to ask, concerning this other, whether it be one or of many parts. If it is one, why not call it the soul straightway? But if it is divisible, reason again demands, what it is that holds this together? And so on ad infinitum.

Self independent of the senses

Main article: Avicennism

While he was imprisoned in a castle, Avicenna wrote his famous "floating man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul. His thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. This argument was later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness."

Bundle theory of self

David Hume pointed out that we tend to think that we are the same person we were five years ago. Although we have changed in many respects, the same person appears present as was present then. We might start thinking about which features can be changed without changing the underlying self. Hume, however, denies that there is a distinction between the various features of a person and the mysterious self that supposedly bears those features. When we start introspecting, "we are never intimately conscious of anything but a particular perception; man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement".

It is plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. It is likewise evident that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects."

In Hume's view, these perceptions do not belong to anything. Rather, Hume compares the soul to a commonwealth, which retains its identity not by virtue of some enduring core substance, but by being composed of many different, related, and yet constantly changing elements. The question of personal identity then becomes a matter of characterizing the loose cohesion of one's personal experience. (Note that in the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume said mysteriously that he was dissatisfied with his account of the self, yet he never returned to the issue.)

The paradox of the Ship of Theseus can be used as an analogy of the self as a bundle of parts in flux.

Self as a narrative center of gravity

Daniel Dennett has a deflationary theory of the "self". Selves are not physically detectable. Instead, they are a kind of convenient fiction, like a center of gravity, which is convenient as a way of solving physics problems, although they need not correspond to anything tangible — the center of gravity of a hoop is a point in thin air. People constantly tell themselves stories to make sense of their world, and they feature in the stories as a character, and that convenient but fictional character is the self.

Self as an indispensable syntactic construct, not an entity

Aaron Sloman has proposed that words like self, selves, herself, itself, themselves, myself, etc. do not refer to a special type of entity, but provide powerful syntactical mechanisms for constructing utterances that repeatedly refer to the same thing without tedious and obscure repetition of names or other referring expressions.

Self in Eastern traditions

In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, the human being is often conceived as being an illusion of individual existence, and separateness from other aspects of creation. This "sense of doership" or sense of individual existence is that part which believes it is the human being, and believes it must fight for itself in the world, is ultimately unaware and unconscious of its own true nature. The ego is often associated with mind and the sense of time, which compulsively thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather than simply knowing its own self and the present.

The spiritual goal of many traditions involves the dissolving of the ego, in contrast to the essential Self, allowing self-knowledge of one's own true nature to become experienced and enacted in the world. This is variously known as enlightenment, nirvana, presence, and the "here and now".

Buddhism

Main article: Anatta

Hume's position is similar to Indian Buddhists’ theories and debates about the self, which generally considers a bundle theory to describe the mind phenomena grouped in aggregates (skandhas), such as sense-perceptions, intellective discrimination (saṃjñā), emotions and volition. Since the beginning of Buddhist philosophy, several schools of interpretation assumed that a self cannot be identified with the transient aggregates, as they are non-self, but some traditions questioned further whether there can be an unchanging ground which defines a real and permanent individual identity, sustaining the impermanent phenomena; concepts such as Buddha-nature are found in the Mahayana lineage, and of an ultimate reality in dzogchen tradition, for instance in Dolpopa and Longchenpa. Although Buddhists criticize the immutable ātman of Hinduism, some Buddhist schools problematized the notion of an individual personhood; even among early ones, such as the Pudgala view, it was approached implicitly in questions such as "who is the bearer of the bundle?", "what carries the aggregates?", "what transmigrates from one rebirth to another?" or "what is the subject of self-improvement and enlightenment?".

The Buddha in particular attacked all attempts to conceive of a fixed self, while stating that holding the view "I have no self" is also mistaken. This is an example of the middle way charted by the Buddha and the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism. That absence of a self definition is directed to avoid clinging to the "I", seek reality and attain detachment, and it is found in many passages of the oldest Buddha sutras, recorded in the Pali Canon, such as this:

"Bhikkhus, form is not-self. Were form self, then this form would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of form: 'Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.' And since form is not-self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have it of form: 'Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.'... Bhikkhus, feeling is not-self... Bhikkhus, perception is not-self... Bhikkhus, determinations are not-self... Bhikkhus, consciousness (vijñāna) is not self.... is form permanent or impermanent?..."

Philosophy of self

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_self 

The philosophy of self is the study of the many conditions of identity that make one subject of experience distinct from other experiences. The self is sometimes understood as a unified being essentially connected to consciousness, awareness, and agency.

Definitions of the self

Most philosophical definitions of self—per Descartes, Locke, Hume, and William James—are expressed in the first person. A third person definition does not refer to specific mental qualia but instead strives for objectivity and operationalism.

To another person, the self of one individual is exhibited in the conduct and discourse of that individual. Therefore, the intentions of another individual can only be inferred from something that emanates from that individual. The particular characteristics of the self determine its identity.

Concepts of self

Self-knowledge

Main article: Self-knowledge (psychology)

Both Western and Eastern civilizations have been occupied with self-knowledge and underscored its importance particularly citing the paradoxical combination of immediate availability and profound obscurity involved in its pursuit. For Socrates, the goal of philosophy was to "know thyself". Lao Tzu, in his Tao Te Ching, says "Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires force. Mastering the self requires strength." The case is the same for the seers of Upanishads, who maintained that the ultimate real knowledge involves an understanding of the essence of the self and the nature of God. Adi Shankaracharya, in his commentary on Bhagavad Gita says "Self-knowledge alone eradicates misery". "Self-knowledge alone is the means to the highest bliss." Absolute perfection is the consummation of Self-knowledge."

A theory about self-knowledge describes the concept as the capacity to detect that the sensations, thoughts, mental states, and attitudes as one's own. It is linked to other concepts such as self-awareness and self-conception. The rationalist theory, which Immanuel Kant has inspired, also claims that our ability to achieve self-knowledge through rational reflection is partly derived from the fact that we view ourselves as rational agents. This school rejects that self-knowledge is merely derived from observation as it acknowledges the subject as authoritative on account of his ability as an agent to shape his own states.

Self as an activity

Aristotle, following Plato, defined the psyche as the core essence of a living being, and while claiming that it did not exist apart from the body, he considered its so-called "intellect" part to be immortal and perpetual, in contrast to its organism-dependent vegetative/nutritive and perceptual functions. In his theory of causes and of act and potency, Aristotle emphasizes beings in relation to their actual manifestation, and in turn the soul was also defined by its actual effects. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is part of the essence of what it is to be a knife. More precisely, the soul is the "first activity" of a living body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or 'second', activity. "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for rational activity," and the potential for rational activity thus constituted the essence of a human soul. He states: "Soul is an actuality or formulable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being besouled", and also "When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal". Aristotle used his concept of the soul in many of his works; his main work on the subject is De Anima (On the Soul).

Aristotle also believed that there were four sections of the soul: the calculative and scientific parts on the rational side used for making decisions, and the desiderative and vegetative parts on the irrational side responsible for identifying our needs. A division of the soul's functions and activities is also found in Plato's tripartite theory. The problem of one in many is also remembered by Aristotle, nonetheless:

If then the soul is of its very nature divisible, what holds it together? Not the body, certainly: much rather the contrary seems to be true, that the soul holds the body together; for when it departs, the body expires and decomposes. If there is some other thing which makes it one, this other is rather the soul. One would then have to ask, concerning this other, whether it be one or of many parts. If it is one, why not call it the soul straightway? But if it is divisible, reason again demands, what it is that holds this together? And so on ad infinitum.

Self independent of the senses

Main article: Avicennism

While he was imprisoned in a castle, Avicenna wrote his famous "floating man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul. His thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is not dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. This argument was later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness."

Bundle theory of self

David Hume pointed out that we tend to think that we are the same person we were five years ago. Although we have changed in many respects, the same person appears present as was present then. We might start thinking about which features can be changed without changing the underlying self. Hume, however, denies that there is a distinction between the various features of a person and the mysterious self that supposedly bears those features. When we start introspecting, "we are never intimately conscious of anything but a particular perception; man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement".

It is plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. It is likewise evident that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects."

In Hume's view, these perceptions do not belong to anything. Rather, Hume compares the soul to a commonwealth, which retains its identity not by virtue of some enduring core substance, but by being composed of many different, related, and yet constantly changing elements. The question of personal identity then becomes a matter of characterizing the loose cohesion of one's personal experience. (Note that in the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume said mysteriously that he was dissatisfied with his account of the self, yet he never returned to the issue.)

The paradox of the Ship of Theseus can be used as an analogy of the self as a bundle of parts in flux.

Self as a narrative center of gravity

Daniel Dennett has a deflationary theory of the "self". Selves are not physically detectable. Instead, they are a kind of convenient fiction, like a center of gravity, which is convenient as a way of solving physics problems, although they need not correspond to anything tangible — the center of gravity of a hoop is a point in thin air. People constantly tell themselves stories to make sense of their world, and they feature in the stories as a character, and that convenient but fictional character is the self.

Self as an indispensable syntactic construct, not an entity

Aaron Sloman has proposed that words like self, selves, herself, itself, themselves, myself, etc. do not refer to a special type of entity, but provide powerful syntactical mechanisms for constructing utterances that repeatedly refer to the same thing without tedious and obscure repetition of names or other referring expressions.

Self in Eastern traditions

In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and eastern meditative traditions, the human being is often conceived as being an illusion of individual existence, and separateness from other aspects of creation. This "sense of doership" or sense of individual existence is that part which believes it is the human being, and believes it must fight for itself in the world, is ultimately unaware and unconscious of its own true nature. The ego is often associated with mind and the sense of time, which compulsively thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather than simply knowing its own self and the present.

The spiritual goal of many traditions involves the dissolving of the ego, in contrast to the essential Self, allowing self-knowledge of one's own true nature to become experienced and enacted in the world. This is variously known as enlightenment, nirvana, presence, and the "here and now".

Buddhism

Main article: Anatta

Hume's position is similar to Indian Buddhists’ theories and debates about the self, which generally considers a bundle theory to describe the mind phenomena grouped in aggregates (skandhas), such as sense-perceptions, intellective discrimination (saṃjñā), emotions and volition. Since the beginning of Buddhist philosophy, several schools of interpretation assumed that a self cannot be identified with the transient aggregates, as they are non-self, but some traditions questioned further whether there can be an unchanging ground which defines a real and permanent individual identity, sustaining the impermanent phenomena; concepts such as Buddha-nature are found in the Mahayana lineage, and of an ultimate reality in dzogchen tradition, for instance in Dolpopa and Longchenpa. Although Buddhists criticize the immutable ātman of Hinduism, some Buddhist schools problematized the notion of an individual personhood; even among early ones, such as the Pudgala view, it was approached implicitly in questions such as "who is the bearer of the bundle?", "what carries the aggregates?", "what transmigrates from one rebirth to another?" or "what is the subject of self-improvement and enlightenment?".

The Buddha in particular attacked all attempts to conceive of a fixed self, while stating that holding the view "I have no self" is also mistaken. This is an example of the middle way charted by the Buddha and the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism. That absence of a self definition is directed to avoid clinging to the "I", seek reality and attain detachment, and it is found in many passages of the oldest Buddha sutras, recorded in the Pali Canon, such as this:

"Bhikkhus, form is not-self. Were form self, then this form would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of form: 'Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.' And since form is not-self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have it of form: 'Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus.'... Bhikkhus, feeling is not-self... Bhikkhus, perception is not-self... Bhikkhus, determinations are not-self... Bhikkhus, consciousness (vijñāna) is not self.... is form permanent or impermanent?..."

 

Many-minds interpretation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-minds_interpretation 

The many-minds interpretation of quantum mechanics extends the many-worlds interpretation by proposing that the distinction between worlds should be made at the level of the mind of an individual observer. The concept was first introduced in 1970 by H. Dieter Zeh as a variant of the Hugh Everett interpretation in connection with quantum decoherence, and later (in 1981) explicitly called a many or multi-consciousness interpretation. The name many-minds interpretation was first used by David Albert and Barry Loewer in 1988.

History

Interpretations of quantum mechanics

Main article: Interpretations of quantum mechanics

The various interpretations of quantum mechanics typically involve explaining the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, or to create a physical picture of the theory. While the mathematical structure has a strong foundation, there is still much debate about the physical and philosophical interpretation of the theory. These interpretations aim to tackle various concepts such as:

1. Evolution of the state of a quantum system (given by the wavefunction), typically through the use of the Schrödinger equation. This concept is almost universally accepted, and is rarely put up to debate.
2. The measurement problem, which relates to what we call wavefunction collapse – the collapse of a quantum state into a definite measurement (i.e. a specific eigenstate of the wavefunction). The debate on whether this collapse actually occurs is a central problem in interpreting quantum mechanics.

The standard solution to the measurement problem is the "Orthodox" or "Copenhagen" interpretation, which claims that the wave function collapses as the result of a measurement by an observer or apparatus external to the quantum system. An alternative interpretation, the Many-worlds Interpretation, was first described by Hugh Everett in 1957 (where it was called the relative state interpretation, the name Many-worlds was coined by Bryce Seligman DeWitt starting in the 1960s and finalized in the 70s). His formalism of quantum mechanics denied that a measurement requires a wave collapse, instead suggesting that all that is truly necessary of a measurement is that a quantum connection is formed between the particle, the measuring device, and the observer.

The many-worlds interpretation

Main article: Many-worlds interpretation

In the original relative state formulation, Everett proposed that there is one universal wavefunction that describes the objective reality of the whole universe. He stated that when subsystems interact, the total system becomes a superposition of these subsystems. This includes observers and measurement systems, which become part of one universal state (the wavefunction) that is always described via the Schrödinger Equation (or its relativistic alternative). That is, the states of the subsystems that interacted become "entangled" in such a way that any definition of one must necessarily involve the other. Thus, each subsystem's state can only be described relative to each subsystem with which it interacts (hence the name relative state).

This has some interesting implications. For starters, Everett suggested that the universe is actually indeterminate as a whole. To see this, consider an observer measuring some particle that starts in an undetermined state, as both spin-up and spin-down, for example - a superposition of both possibilities. When an observer measures that particle's spin, however, it always registers as either up or down. The problem of how to understand this sudden shift from "both up and down" to "either up or down" is called the Measurement problem. According to the many-worlds interpretation, the act of measurement forced a “splitting” of the universe into two states, one spin-up and the other spin-down, and the two branches that extend from those two subsequently independent states. One branch measures up. The other measures down. Looking at the instrument informs the observer which branch she's on, but the system itself is indeterminate at this and, by logical extension, presumably any higher level.

The “worlds” in the many worlds theory is then just the complete measurement history up until and during the measurement in question, where splitting happens. These “worlds” each describe a different state of the universal wave function and cannot communicate. There is no collapse of the wavefunction into one state or another, but rather you just find yourself in the world leading up to what measurement you have made and are unaware of the other possibilities that are equally real.

The many-minds interpretation

The many-minds interpretation of quantum theory is many-worlds with the distinction between worlds constructed at the level of the individual observer. Rather than the worlds that branch, it is the observer's mind.

The purpose of this interpretation is to overcome the fundamentally strange concept of observers being in a superposition with themselves. In their 1988 paper, Albert and Loewer argue that it simply makes no sense for one to think of the mind of an observer to be in an indefinite state. Rather, when someone answers the question about which state of a system they have observed, they must answer with complete certainty. If they are in a superposition of states, then this certainty is not possible and we arrive at a contradiction. To overcome this, they then suggest that it is merely the “bodies” of the minds that are in a superposition, and that the minds must have definite states that are never in superposition.

When an observer measures a quantum system and becomes entangled with it, it now constitutes a larger quantum system. In regards to each possibility within the wave function, a mental state of the brain corresponds. And ultimately, only one mind is experienced, leading the others to branch off and become inaccessible, albeit real. In this way, every sentient being is attributed with an infinity of minds, whose prevalence correspond to the amplitude of the wavefunction. As an observer checks a measurement, the probability of realizing a specific measurement directly correlates to the number of minds they have where they see that measurement. It is in this way that the probabilistic nature of quantum measurements are obtained by the Many-minds Interpretation.

Quantum non-locality in the many-minds interpretation

The body remains in an indeterminate state while the minds picks a stochastic result.

Consider an experiment where we are measuring the polarization of two photons. When the photon is created it has an indeterminate polarization. If a stream of these photons is passed through a polarization filter, 50% of the light is passed through. This corresponds to each photon having a 50% chance of aligning perfectly with the filter and thus passing, or being misaligned (by 90 degrees relative to the polarization filter) and being absorbed. Quantum mechanically, this means the photon is in a superposition of states where it is either passed or absorbed. Now, consider the inclusion of another photon and polarization detector. Now, the photons are created in such a way that they are entangled. That is, when one photon takes on a polarization state, the other photon will always behave as if it has the same polarization. For simplicity, take the second filter to either be perfectly aligned with the first, or to be perfectly misaligned (90 degree difference in angle, such that it is absorbed). If the detectors are aligned, both photons are passed (i.e. we say they agree). If they are misaligned, only the first passes and the second is absorbed (now they disagree). Thus, the entanglement causes perfect correlations between the two measurements - regardless of separation distance, making the interaction non-local. This sort of experiment is further explained in Tim Maudlin's Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity, and can be related to Bell test experiments. Now, consider the analysis of this experiment from the many minds point of view:

No sentient observer

Consider the case where there is no sentient observer, i.e. no mind around to observe the experiment. In this case, the detector will be in an indefinite state. The photon is both passed and absorbed, and will remain in this state. The correlations are withheld in that none of the possible "minds", or wave function states, correspond to non correlated results.

One sentient observer

Now expand the situation to have one sentient being observing the device. Now, they too enter the indefinite state. Their eyes, body, and brain are seeing both spins at the same time. The mind however, stochastically chooses one of the directions, and that is what the mind sees. When this observer goes over to the second detector, their body will see both results. Their mind will choose the result that agrees with the first detector, and the observer will see the expected results. However, the observer's mind seeing one result does not directly affect the distant state - there is just no wave function in which the expected correlations do not exist. The true correlation only happens when they actually go over to the second detector.

Two sentient observers

When two people look at two different detectors that scan entangled particles, both observers will enter an indefinite state, as with one observer. These results need not agree – the second observer's mind does not have to have results that correlate with the first's. When one observer tells the results to the second observer, their two minds cannot communicate and thus will only interact with the other's body, which is still indefinite. When the second observer responds, his body will respond with whatever result agrees with the first observer's mind. This means that both observer's minds will be in a state of the wavefunction that always get the expected results, but individually their results could be different.

Non-locality of the many-minds interpretation

As we have thus seen, any correlations seen in the wavefunction of each observer's minds are only concrete after interaction between the different polarizers. The correlations on the level of individual minds correspond to the appearance of quantum non-locality (or equivalently, violation of Bell's inequality). So the many world is non-local, or it cannot explain EPR-GHZ correlations.

Support

There is currently no empirical evidence for the many-minds interpretation. However, there are theories that do not discredit the many-minds interpretation. In light of Bell's analysis of the consequences of quantum non-locality, empirical evidence is needed to avoid inventing novel fundamental concepts (hidden variables). Two different solutions of the measurement problem then appear conceivable: von Neumann's collapse or Everett's relative state interpretation. In both cases a (suitably modified) psycho-physical parallelism can be re-established.

If neural processes can be described and analyzed then some experiments could potentially be created to test whether affecting neural processes can have an effect on a quantum system. Speculation about the details of this awareness-local physical system coupling on a purely theoretical basis could occur, however experimentally searching for them through neurological and psychological studies would be ideal.

Objections

On the surface Many-minds arguably violates Occam's Razor; proponents counter that in fact these solutions minimize entities by simplifying the rules that would be required to describe the universe.

Nothing within quantum theory itself requires each possibility within a wave function to complement a mental state. As all physical states (i.e. brain states) are quantum states, their associated mental states should be also. Nonetheless, it is not what we experience within physical reality. Albert and Loewer argue that the mind must be intrinsically different than the physical reality as described by quantum theory. Thereby, they reject type-identity physicalism in favour of a non-reductive stance. However, Lockwood saves materialism through the notion of supervenience of the mental on the physical.

Nonetheless, the Many-minds Interpretation does not solve the mindless hulks problem as a problem of supervenience. Mental states do not supervene on brain states as a given brain state is compatible with different configurations of mental states.

Another serious objection is that workers in No Collapse interpretations have produced no more than elementary models based on the definite existence of specific measuring devices. They have assumed, for example, that the Hilbert space of the universe splits naturally into a tensor product structure compatible with the measurement under consideration. They have also assumed, even when describing the behaviour of macroscopic objects, that it is appropriate to employ models in which only a few dimensions of Hilbert space are used to describe all the relevant behaviour.

Furthermore, as the Many-minds Interpretation is corroborated by our experience of physical reality, a notion of many unseen worlds and its compatibility with other physical theories (i.e. the principle of the conservation of mass) is difficult to reconcile. According to Schrödinger's equation, the mass-energy of the combined observed system and measurement apparatus is the same before and after. However, with every measurement process (i.e. splitting), the total mass-energy would seemingly increase.

Peter J. Lewis argues that the Many-minds Interpretation of quantum mechanics has absurd implications for agents facing life-or-death decisions.

In general, the Many-minds theory holds that a conscious being who observes the outcome of a random zero-sum experiment will evolve into two successors in different observer states, each of whom observes one of the possible outcomes. Moreover, the theory advises you to favour choices in such situations in proportion to the probability that they will bring good results to your various successors. But in a life-or-death case like getting into the box with Schrödinger's cat, you will only have one successor, since one of the outcomes will ensure your death. So it seems that the Many-minds Interpretation advises you to get in the box with the cat, since it is certain that your only successor will emerge unharmed. See also quantum suicide and immortality.

Finally, it supposes that there is some physical distinction between a conscious observer and a non-conscious measuring device, so it seems to require eliminating the strong Church–Turing hypothesis or postulating a physical model for consciousness.

Quantum mind

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind

The quantum mind or quantum consciousness is a group of hypotheses proposing that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness. It posits that quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function and could explain consciousness.

The hypotheses assert that consciousness is somehow quantum-mechanical and can overlap with quantum mysticism, a pseudoscientific movement that assigns supernatural characteristics to various quantum phenomena such as nonlocality and the observer effect.

History

Eugene Wigner developed the idea that quantum mechanics has something to do with the workings of the mind. He proposed that the wave function collapses due to its interaction with consciousness. Freeman Dyson argued that "mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron".

Other contemporary physicists and philosophers considered these arguments unconvincing. Victor Stenger characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having "no scientific basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and dragons".

David Chalmers argues against quantum consciousness. He instead discusses how quantum mechanics may relate to dualistic consciousness. Chalmers is skeptical that any new physics can resolve the hard problem of consciousness.

Approaches

Bohm

David Bohm viewed quantum theory and relativity as contradictory, which implied a more fundamental level in the universe. He claimed that both quantum theory and relativity pointed to this deeper theory, which he formulated as a quantum field theory. This more fundamental level was proposed to represent an undivided wholeness and an implicate order, from which arises the explicate order of the universe as we experience it.

Bohm's proposed order applies both to matter and consciousness. He suggested that it could explain the relationship between them. He saw mind and matter as projections into our explicate order from the underlying implicate order. Bohm claimed that when we look at matter, we see nothing that helps us to understand consciousness.

Bohm discussed the experience of listening to music. He believed that the feeling of movement and change that make up our experience of music derive from holding the immediate past and the present in the brain together. The musical notes from the past are transformations rather than memories. The notes that were implicated in the immediate past become explicate in the present. Bohm viewed this as consciousness emerging from the implicate order.

Bohm saw the movement, change or flow, and the coherence of experiences, such as listening to music, as a manifestation of the implicate order. He claimed to derive evidence for this from Jean Piaget's work on infants. He held these studies to show that young children learn about time and space because they have a "hard-wired" understanding of movement as part of the implicate order. He compared this hard-wiring to Chomsky's theory that grammar is hard-wired into human brains.

Bohm never proposed a specific means by which his proposal could be falsified, nor a neural mechanism through which his "implicate order" could emerge in a way relevant to consciousness. He later collaborated on Karl Pribram's holonomic brain theory as a model of quantum consciousness.

According to philosopher Paavo Pylkkänen, Bohm's suggestion "leads naturally to the assumption that the physical correlate of the logical thinking process is at the classically describable level of the brain, while the basic thinking process is at the quantum-theoretically describable level".

Penrose and Hameroff

Main article: Orchestrated objective reduction

Theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff collaborated to produce the theory known as "orchestrated objective reduction" (Orch-OR). Penrose and Hameroff initially developed their ideas separately and later collaborated to produce Orch-OR in the early 1990s. They reviewed and updated their theory in 2013.

Penrose's argument stemmed from Gödel's incompleteness theorems. In his first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind (1989), he argued that while a formal system cannot prove its own consistency, Gödel's unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians. Penrose took this to mean that human mathematicians are not formal proof systems and not running a computable algorithm. According to Bringsjord and Xiao, this line of reasoning is based on fallacious equivocation on the meaning of computation. In the same book, Penrose wrote: "One might speculate, however, that somewhere deep in the brain, cells are to be found of single quantum sensitivity. If this proves to be the case, then quantum mechanics will be significantly involved in brain activity."

Penrose determined that wave function collapse was the only possible physical basis for a non-computable process. Dissatisfied with its randomness, he proposed a new form of wave function collapse that occurs in isolation and called it objective reduction. He suggested each quantum superposition has its own piece of spacetime curvature and that when these become separated by more than one Planck length, they become unstable and collapse. Penrose suggested that objective reduction represents neither randomness nor algorithmic processing but instead a non-computable influence in spacetime geometry from which mathematical understanding and, by later extension, consciousness derives.

Hameroff provided a hypothesis that microtubules would be suitable hosts for quantum behavior. Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimer subunits. The dimers each have hydrophobic pockets that are 8 nm apart and may contain delocalized π electrons. Tubulins have other smaller non-polar regions that contain π-electron-rich indole rings separated by about 2 nm. Hameroff proposed that these electrons are close enough to become entangled. He originally suggested that the tubulin-subunit electrons would form a Bose–Einstein condensate, but this was discredited. He then proposed a Frohlich condensate, a hypothetical coherent oscillation of dipolar molecules, but this too was experimentally discredited.

Orch-OR has made numerous false biological predictions and is not an accepted model of brain physiology. In other words, there is a missing link between physics and neuroscience. For instance, the proposed predominance of A-lattice microtubules, more suitable for information processing, was falsified by Kikkawa et al., who showed that all in vivo microtubules have a B lattice and a seam. The proposed existence of gap junctions between neurons and glial cells was also falsified. Orch-OR predicted that microtubule coherence reaches the synapses through dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs), but De Zeeuw et al. proved this impossible by showing that DLBs are micrometers away from gap junctions.

In 2014, Hameroff and Penrose claimed that the discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules by Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan in March 2013 corroborates Orch-OR theory.

Although these theories are stated in a scientific framework, it is difficult to separate them from scientists' personal opinions. The opinions are often based on intuition or subjective ideas about the nature of consciousness. For example, Penrose wrote:

[M]y own point of view asserts that you can't even simulate conscious activity. What's going on in conscious thinking is something you couldn't properly imitate at all by computer.... If something behaves as though it's conscious, do you say it is conscious? People argue endlessly about that. Some people would say, "Well, you've got to take the operational viewpoint; we don't know what consciousness is. How do you judge whether a person is conscious or not? Only by the way they act. You apply the same criterion to a computer or a computer-controlled robot." Other people would say, "No, you can't say it feels something merely because it behaves as though it feels something." My view is different from both those views. The robot wouldn't even behave convincingly as though it was conscious unless it really was—which I say it couldn't be, if it's entirely computationally controlled.

Penrose continues:

A lot of what the brain does you could do on a computer. I'm not saying that all the brain's action is completely different from what you do on a computer. I am claiming that the actions of consciousness are something different. I'm not saying that consciousness is beyond physics, either—although I'm saying that it's beyond the physics we know now.... My claim is that there has to be something in physics that we don't yet understand, which is very important, and which is of a noncomputational character. It's not specific to our brains; it's out there, in the physical world. But it usually plays a totally insignificant role. It would have to be in the bridge between quantum and classical levels of behavior—that is, where quantum measurement comes in.

W. Daniel Hillis responded: "Penrose has committed the classical mistake of putting humans at the center of the universe. His argument is essentially that he can't imagine how the mind could be as complicated as it is without having some magic elixir brought in from some new principle of physics, so therefore it must involve that. It's a failure of Penrose's imagination.... It's true that there are unexplainable, uncomputable things, but there's no reason whatsoever to believe that the complex behavior we see in humans is in any way related to uncomputable, unexplainable things."

Lawrence Krauss is also blunt in criticizing Penrose's ideas. He has said: "Roger Penrose has given lots of new-age crackpots ammunition by suggesting that at some fundamental scale, quantum mechanics might be relevant for consciousness. When you hear the term 'quantum consciousness', you should be suspicious.... Many people are dubious that Penrose's suggestions are reasonable, because the brain is not an isolated quantum-mechanical system."

Umezawa, Vitiello, Freeman

Hiroomi Umezawa and collaborators proposed a quantum field theory of memory storage. Giuseppe Vitiello and Walter Freeman proposed a dialog model of the mind. This dialog takes place between the classical and the quantum parts of the brain. Their quantum field theory models of brain dynamics are fundamentally different from the Penrose–Hameroff theory.

Pribram, Bohm, Kak

Karl Pribram's holonomic brain theory (quantum holography) invoked quantum mechanics to explain higher-order processing by the mind. He argued that his holonomic model solved the binding problem. Pribram collaborated with Bohm in his work on quantum approaches to mind and he provided evidence on how much of the processing in the brain was done in wholes. He proposed that ordered water at dendritic membrane surfaces might operate by structuring Bose–Einstein condensation supporting quantum dynamics.

Stapp

Henry Stapp proposed that quantum waves are reduced only when they interact with consciousness. He argues from the orthodox quantum mechanics of John von Neumann that the quantum state collapses when the observer selects one among the alternative quantum possibilities as a basis for future action. The collapse, therefore, takes place in the expectation that the observer associated with the state. Stapp's work drew criticism from scientists such as David Bourget and Danko Georgiev. Georgiev criticized Stapp's model in two respects:

• Stapp's mind does not have its own wavefunction or density matrix, but nevertheless can act upon the brain using projection operators. Such usage is not compatible with standard quantum mechanics because one can attach any number of ghostly minds to any point in space that act upon physical quantum systems with any projection operators. Stapp's model therefore negates "the prevailing principles of physics".
• Stapp's claim that quantum Zeno effect is robust against environmental decoherence directly contradicts a basic theorem in quantum information theory: that acting with projection operators upon the density matrix of a quantum system can only increase the system's von Neumann entropy.

Stapp has responded to both of Georgiev's objections.

David Pearce

British philosopher David Pearce defends what he calls physicalistic idealism ("the non-materialist physicalist claim that reality is fundamentally experiential and that the natural world is exhaustively described by the equations of physics and their solutions") and has conjectured that unitary conscious minds are physical states of quantum coherence (neuronal superpositions). This conjecture is, according to Pearce, amenable to falsification, unlike most theories of consciousness, and Pearce has outlined an experimental protocol describing how the hypothesis could be tested using matter-wave interferometry to detect nonclassical interference patterns of neuronal superpositions at the onset of thermal decoherence. Pearce admits that his ideas are "highly speculative", "counterintuitive", and "incredible".

Criticism

These hypotheses of the quantum mind remain hypothetical speculation, as Penrose and Pearce admit in their discussions. Until they make a prediction that is tested by experimentation, the hypotheses aren't based on empirical evidence. According to Krauss, "It is true that quantum mechanics is extremely strange, and on extremely small scales for short times, all sorts of weird things happen. And in fact, we can make weird quantum phenomena happen. But what quantum mechanics doesn't change about the universe is, if you want to change things, you still have to do something. You can't change the world by thinking about it."

The process of testing the hypotheses with experiments is fraught with conceptual/theoretical, practical, and ethical problems.

Conceptual problems

The idea that a quantum effect is necessary for consciousness to function is still in the realm of philosophy. Penrose proposes that it is necessary, but other theories of consciousness do not indicate that it is needed. For example, Daniel Dennett proposed a theory called multiple drafts model, which doesn't indicate that quantum effects are needed, in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained. A philosophical argument on either side isn't scientific proof, although philosophical analysis can indicate key differences in the types of models and show what type of experimental differences might be observed. But since there isn't a clear consensus among philosophers, it isn't conceptual support that a quantum mind theory is needed.

There are computers that are specifically designed to compute using quantum-mechanical effects. Quantum computing is computing using quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement. They are different from binary digital electronic computers based on transistors. Whereas common digital computing requires that the data be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1), quantum computation uses quantum bits, which can be in superpositions of states. One of the greatest challenges is controlling or removing quantum decoherence. This usually means isolating the system from its environment, as interactions with the external world cause the system to decohere. Some quantum computers require their qubits to be cooled to 20 millikelvins in order to prevent significant decoherence. As a result, time-consuming tasks may render some quantum algorithms inoperable, as maintaining the state of qubits long enough eventually corrupts the superpositions. There aren't any obvious analogies between the functioning of quantum computers and the human brain. Some hypothetical models of quantum mind have proposed mechanisms for maintaining quantum coherence in the brain, but they have not been shown to operate.

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon often invoked for quantum mind models. This effect occurs when pairs or groups of particles interact so that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the other(s), even when the particles are separated by a large distance. Instead, a quantum state has to be described for the whole system. Measurements of physical properties such as position, momentum, spin, and polarization, performed on entangled particles are found to be correlated. If one particle is measured, the same property of the other particle immediately adjusts to maintain the conservation of the physical phenomenon. According to the formalism of quantum theory, the effect of measurement happens instantly, no matter how far apart the particles are. It is not possible to use this effect to transmit classical information at faster-than-light speeds (see Faster-than-light § Quantum mechanics). Entanglement is broken when the entangled particles decohere through interaction with the environment—for example, when a measurement is made or the particles undergo random collisions or interactions. According to Pearce, "In neuronal networks, ion–ion scattering, ion–water collisions, and long-range Coulomb interactions from nearby ions all contribute to rapid decoherence times; but thermally induced decoherence is even harder experimentally to control than collisional decoherence." He anticipated that quantum effects would have to be measured in femtoseconds, a trillion times faster than the rate at which neurons function (milliseconds).

Another possible conceptual approach is to use quantum mechanics as an analogy to understand a different field of study like consciousness, without expecting that the laws of quantum physics will apply. An example of this approach is the idea of Schrödinger's cat. Erwin Schrödinger described how one could, in principle, create entanglement of a large-scale system by making it dependent on an elementary particle in a superposition. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a locked steel chamber, wherein the cat's survival depended on the state of a radioactive atom—whether it had decayed and emitted radiation. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat is both alive and dead until the state has been observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics. But since Schrödinger's time, physicists have given other interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real. Schrödinger's famous thought experiment poses the question, "when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?" In the same way, one can ask whether the act of making a decision is analogous to having a superposition of states of two decision outcomes, so that making a decision means "opening the box" to reduce the brain from a combination of states to one state. This analogy about decision-making uses a formalism derived from quantum mechanics, but doesn't indicate the actual mechanism by which the decision is made. In this way, the idea is similar to quantum cognition. This field clearly distinguishes itself from the quantum mind, as it is not reliant on the hypothesis that there is something micro-physical quantum-mechanical about the brain. Quantum cognition is based on the quantum-like paradigm, generalized quantum paradigm, or quantum structure paradigm that information processing by complex systems such as the brain can be mathematically described in the framework of quantum information and quantum probability theory. This model uses quantum mechanics only as an analogy, but doesn't propose that quantum mechanics is the physical mechanism by which it operates. For example, quantum cognition proposes that some decisions can be analyzed as if there is interference between two alternatives, but it is not a physical quantum interference effect.

Practical problems

The demonstration of a quantum-mind effect by experiment is necessary. Is there a way to show that consciousness is impossible without a quantum effect? Can a sufficiently complex digital, non-quantum computer be shown to be incapable of consciousness? Perhaps a quantum computer will show that quantum effects are needed. In any case, complex computers that are either digital or quantum computers may be built. These could demonstrate which type of computer is capable of conscious, intentional thought. But they don't exist yet, and no experimental test has been demonstrated.

Quantum mechanics is a mathematical model that can provide some extremely accurate numerical predictions. Richard Feynman called quantum electrodynamics, based on the quantum-mechanics formalism, "the jewel of physics" for its extremely accurate predictions of quantities like the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and the Lamb shift of the energy levels of hydrogen. So it is not impossible that the model could provide an accurate prediction about consciousness that would confirm that a quantum effect is involved. If the mind depends on quantum mechanical effects, the true proof is to find an experiment that provides a calculation that can be compared to experimental measurement. It has to show a measurable difference between a classical computation result in a brain and one that involves quantum effects.

The main theoretical argument against the quantum-mind hypothesis is the assertion that quantum states in the brain would lose coherency before they reached a scale where they could be useful for neural processing. This supposition was elaborated by Max Tegmark. His calculations indicate that quantum systems in the brain decohere at sub-picosecond timescales. No response by a brain has shown computational results or reactions on this fast of a timescale. Typical reactions are on the order of milliseconds, trillions of times longer than sub-picosecond timescales.

Daniel Dennett uses an experimental result in support of his multiple drafts model of an optical illusion that happens on a time scale of less than a second or so. In this experiment, two different-colored lights, with an angular separation of a few degrees at the eye, are flashed in succession. If the interval between the flashes is less than a second or so, the first light that is flashed appears to move across to the position of the second light. Furthermore, the light seems to change color as it moves across the visual field. A green light will appear to turn red as it seems to move across to the position of a red light. Dennett asks how we could see the light change color before the second light is observed. Velmans argues that the cutaneous rabbit illusion, another illusion that happens in about a second, demonstrates that there is a delay while modelling occurs in the brain and that this delay was discovered by Libet. These slow illusions that happen at times of less than a second don't support a proposal that the brain functions on the picosecond time scale.

According to David Pearce, a demonstration of picosecond effects is "the fiendishly hard part – feasible in principle, but an experimental challenge still beyond the reach of contemporary molecular matter-wave interferometry. [...] The conjecture predicts that we'll discover the interference signature of sub-femtosecond macro-superpositions."

Penrose says:

The problem with trying to use quantum mechanics in the action of the brain is that if it were a matter of quantum nerve signals, these nerve signals would disturb the rest of the material in the brain, to the extent that the quantum coherence would get lost very quickly. You couldn't even attempt to build a quantum computer out of ordinary nerve signals, because they're just too big and in an environment that's too disorganized. Ordinary nerve signals have to be treated classically. But if you go down to the level of the microtubules, then there's an extremely good chance that you can get quantum-level activity inside them.

For my picture, I need this quantum-level activity in the microtubules; the activity has to be a large-scale thing that goes not just from one microtubule to the next but from one nerve cell to the next, across large areas of the brain. We need some kind of coherent activity of a quantum nature which is weakly coupled to the computational activity that Hameroff argues is taking place along the microtubules.

There are various avenues of attack. One is directly on the physics, on quantum theory, and there are certain experiments that people are beginning to perform, and various schemes for a modification of quantum mechanics. I don't think the experiments are sensitive enough yet to test many of these specific ideas. One could imagine experiments that might test these things, but they'd be very hard to perform.

A demonstration of a quantum effect in the brain has to explain this problem or explain why it is not relevant, or that the brain somehow circumvents the problem of the loss of quantum coherency at body temperature. As Penrose proposes, it may require a new type of physical theory.

Ethical problems

According to Lawrence Krauss, "You should be wary whenever you hear something like 'Quantum mechanics connects you with the universe' ... or 'quantum mechanics unifies you with everything else'. You can begin to be skeptical that the speaker is somehow trying to use quantum mechanics to argue fundamentally that you can change the world by thinking about it." A subjective feeling is not sufficient to make this determination. Humans don't have a reliable subjective feeling for how we do a lot of functions. According to Daniel Dennett, "On this topic, Everybody's an expert... but they think that they have a particular personal authority about the nature of their own conscious experiences that can trump any hypothesis they find unacceptable."

Since humans are the only animals that can verbally communicate their conscious experience, performing experiments to demonstrate quantum effects in consciousness requires experimentation on a living human brain. This is not automatically excluded or impossible, but it seriously limits the kinds of experiments that can be done. Studies of the ethics of brain studies are being actively solicited by the BRAIN Initiative, a U.S. Federal Government funded effort to document the connections of neurons in the brain.

An ethically objectionable practice by proponents of quantum mind theories involves the practice of using quantum-mechanical terms in an effort to make the argument sound more impressive, even when they know that those terms are irrelevant. Dale DeBakcsy notes that "trendy parapsychologists, academic relativists, and even the Dalai Lama have all taken their turn at robbing modern physics of a few well-sounding phrases and stretching them far beyond their original scope in order to add scientific weight to various pet theories". At the very least, these proponents must make a clear statement about whether quantum formalism is being used as an analogy or as an actual physical mechanism, and what evidence they are using for support. An ethical statement by a researcher should specify what kind of relationship their hypothesis has to the physical laws.

Misleading statements of this type have been given by, for example, Deepak Chopra. Chopra has commonly referred to topics such as quantum healing or quantum effects of consciousness. Seeing the human body as being undergirded by a "quantum-mechanical body" composed not of matter but of energy and information, he believes that "human aging is fluid and changeable; it can speed up, slow down, stop for a time, and even reverse itself", as determined by one's state of mind. Robert Carroll states that Chopra attempts to integrate Ayurveda with quantum mechanics to justify his teachings. Chopra argues that what he calls "quantum healing" cures any manner of ailments, including cancer, through effects that he claims are literally based on the same principles as quantum mechanics. This has led physicists to object to his use of the term quantum in reference to medical conditions and the human body. Chopra said: "I think quantum theory has a lot of things to say about the observer effect, about non-locality, about correlations. So I think there’s a school of physicists who believe that consciousness has to be equated, or at least brought into the equation, in understanding quantum mechanics." On the other hand, he also claims that "[quantum effects are] just a metaphor. Just like an electron or a photon is an indivisible unit of information and energy, a thought is an indivisible unit of consciousness." In his book Quantum Healing, Chopra stated the conclusion that quantum entanglement links everything in the Universe, and therefore it must create consciousness. In either case, the references to the word "quantum" don't mean what a physicist would claim, and arguments that use the word "quantum" shouldn't be taken as scientifically proven.

Chris Carter includes statements in his book Science and Psychic Phenomena of quotes from quantum physicists in support of psychic phenomena. In a review of the book, Benjamin Radford wrote that Carter used such references to "quantum physics, which he knows nothing about and which he (and people like Deepak Chopra) love to cite and reference because it sounds mysterious and paranormal.... Real, actual physicists I've spoken to break out laughing at this crap.... If Carter wishes to posit that quantum physics provides a plausible mechanism for psi, then it is his responsibility to show that, and he clearly fails to do so." Sharon Hill has studied amateur paranormal research groups, and these groups like to use "vague and confusing language: ghosts 'use energy', are made up of 'magnetic fields', or are associated with a 'quantum state'".

Statements like these about quantum mechanics indicate a temptation to misinterpret technical, mathematical terms like entanglement in terms of mystical feelings. This approach can be interpreted as a kind of scientism, using the language and authority of science when the scientific concepts don't apply.

Perhaps the final question is, what difference does it make if quantum effects are involved in computations in the brain? It is already known that quantum mechanics plays a role in the brain since quantum mechanics determines the shapes and properties of molecules like neurotransmitters and proteins, and these molecules affect how the brain works. This is the reason that drugs such as morphine affect consciousness. As Daniel Dennett said, "quantum effects are there in your car, your watch, and your computer. But most things — most macroscopic objects — are, as it were, oblivious to quantum effects. They don't amplify them; they don't hinge on them." Lawrence Krauss said: "We're also connected to the universe by gravity, and we're connected to the planets by gravity. But that doesn't mean that astrology is true.... Often, people who are trying to sell whatever it is they're trying to sell try to justify it on the basis of science. Everyone knows quantum mechanics is weird, so why not use that to justify it? ... I don't know how many times I've heard people say, 'Oh, I love quantum mechanics because I'm really into meditation, or I love the spiritual benefits that it brings me.' But quantum mechanics, for better or worse, doesn't bring any more spiritual benefits than gravity does."