Myswizard

There is no clock; “time” is an illusion
• Time has no indivisible unit.
• There is no “now,” only sequences of events.
Peter Lynds
Time, Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Indeterminacy, Discontinuity, Relativity, Cosmology, Imaginary Time, Chronons, Zeno’s Paradoxes.
It is postulated there is not a precise static instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process at which the relative position of a body in relative motion or a specific physical magnitude would theoretically be precisely determined. It is concluded it is exactly because of this that time (relative interval as indicated by a clock) and the continuity of a physical process is possible, with there being a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time. This explanation is also shown to be the correct solution to the motion and infinity paradoxes, excluding the Stadium, originally
conceived by the ancient Greek mathematician Zeno of Elea. Quantum Cosmology, Imaginary Time and Chronons are also then discussed, with the latter two appearing to be superseded on a theoretical basis.
Peter Lynds___Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity
Ground-breaking work in understanding of time
Peter Lynds Homepage

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve deliberately left out the mathematical equations which go with this article. If you wish to see all equations click on the bottom reference. Myswizard

Quantum entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other, even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This leads to correlations between observable physical properties of the systems. For example, it is possible to prepare two particles in a single quantum state such that when one is observed to be spin-up, the other one will always be observed to be spin-down and vice versa, this despite the fact that it is impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of measurements will be observed. As a result, measurements performed on one system seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it. Nevertheless, classical information cannot be transmitted through entanglement faster than the speed of light.

Quantum entanglement is closely concerned with the emerging technologies of quantum computing and quantum cryptography, and has been used for experiments in quantum teleportation. At the same time, it produces some of the more theoretically and philosophically disturbing aspects of the theory. The correlations predicted by quantum mechanics, and observed in experiment, naively appear to be inconsistent with the seemingly obvious principle of local realism, which is that information about the state of a system should only be mediated by interactions in its immediate surroundings. Different views of what is actually occurring in the process of quantum entanglement give rise to different interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Background
Entanglement is one of the properties of quantum mechanics which caused Einstein and others to dislike the theory. In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen formulated the EPR paradox, a quantum-mechanical thought experiment with a highly counterintuitive and apparently nonlocal outcome. Einstein famously derided entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.”

On the other hand, quantum mechanics has been highly successful in producing correct experimental predictions, and the strong correlations associated with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement have in fact been observed. One apparent way to explain quantum entanglement is an approach known as “hidden variable theory”, in which unknown deterministic microscopic parameters would cause the correlations. However, in 1964 Bell derived an upper limit, known as Bell’s inequality, on the strength of correlations for any theory obeying “local realism” (see principle of locality). Quantum entanglement can lead to stronger correlations that violate this limit, so that quantum entanglement is experimentally distinguishable from a broad class of local hidden-variable theories. Results of subsequent experiments have overwhelmingly supported quantum mechanics. It is known that there are a number of loopholes in these experiments. High efficiency and high visibility experiments are now in progress which should accept or reject those loopholes. For more information, see the article on Bell test experiments.

Observations on entangled states naively appear to conflict with the property of Einsteinian relativity that information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light. Although two entangled systems appear to interact across large spatial separations, no useful information can be transmitted in this way, so causality cannot be violated through entanglement. This occurs for two subtle reasons: (i) quantum mechanical measurements yield probabilistic results, and (ii) the no cloning theorem forbids the statistical inspection of entangled quantum states.

Although no information can be transmitted through entanglement alone, it is possible to transmit information using a set of entangled states used in conjunction with a classical information channel. This process is known as quantum teleportation. Despite its name, quantum teleportation cannot be used to transmit information faster than light, because a classical information channel is involved.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Quantum entanglement”.

In quantum mechanics, the EPR paradox (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) is a thought experiment which demonstrates that the result of a measurement performed on one part of a quantum system can have an instantaneous effect on the result of a measurement performed on another part, regardless of the distance separating the two parts. Although this may seem incompatible with special relativity, which states that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light, this is not the case. “EPR” stands for Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, who introduced the thought experiment in a 1935 paper to argue that quantum mechanics is not a complete physical theory. It is sometimes referred to as the EPRB paradox for David Bohm, who converted the original thought experiment into something closer to being experimentally testable.

Although originally devised as a thought experiment that should expose quantum mechanics’ incompleteness, actual experimental results, carried out when technology later became available, do demonstrate the non-local effect, effectively retorting against the EPR trio’s original purpose. The “spooky action at a distance” that so disturbed EPR consistently occurs in numerous and widely replicated experiments. Einstein never really accepted quantum mechanics as a “real” and complete theory, struggling to the end of his career (and life) for an interpretation that could comply with his Relativity without implying “God playing dice”, as he condensed his dissatisfaction with QM’s intrinsic randomness and (still to be resolved) counter-intuitivity.

The EPR paradox is a paradox in the following sense: if one takes quantum mechanics and adds some seemingly reasonable conditions (referred to as “locality”, “realism”, and “completeness”), then one obtains a contradiction. However, quantum mechanics by itself does not appear to be internally inconsistent, nor — as it turns out — does it contradict relativity. As a result of further theoretical and experimental developments since the original EPR paper, most physicists today regard the EPR paradox as an illustration of how quantum mechanics violates classical intuitions, and not as an indication that quantum mechanics is fundamentally flawed.

Description of the paradox
The EPR paradox draws on a phenomenon predicted by quantum mechanics, known as quantum entanglement, to show that measurements performed on spatially separated parts of a quantum system can apparently have an instantaneous influence on one another. This effect is now known as “nonlocal behaviour” (or colloquially as “quantum weirdness”). In order to illustrate this, let us consider a simplified version of the EPR thought experiment due to Bohm.

Measurements on an entangled state
We have a source that emits pairs of electrons, with one electron sent to destination A, where there is an observer named Alice, and another is sent to destination B, where there is an observer named Bob. According to quantum mechanics, we can arrange our source so that each emitted electron pair occupies a quantum state called a spin singlet. This can be viewed as a quantum superposition of two states, which we call I and II. In state I, electron A has spin pointing upward along the z-axis (+z) and electron B has spin pointing downward along the z-axis (-z). In state II, electron A has spin -z and electron B has spin +z. Therefore, it is impossible to associate either electron in the spin singlet with a state of definite spin. The electrons are thus said to be entangled.

The EPR thought experiment, performed with electrons. A source (center) sends electrons toward two observers, Alice (left) and Bob (right), who can perform spin measurements.
Alice now measures the spin along the z-axis. She can obtain one of two possible outcomes: +z or -z. Suppose she gets +z. According to quantum mechanics, the quantum state of the system collapses into state I. (Different interpretations of quantum mechanics have different ways of saying this, but the basic result is the same.) The quantum state determines the probable outcomes of any measurement performed on the system. In this case, if Bob subsequently measures spin along the z-axis, he will obtain -z with 100% probability. Similarly, if Alice gets -z, Bob will get +z.

There is, of course, nothing special about our choice of the z axis. For instance, suppose that Alice and Bob now decide to measure spin along the x-axis. According to quantum mechanics, the spin singlet state may equally well be expressed as a superposition of spin states pointing in the x direction. We’ll call these states Ia and IIa. In state Ia, Alice’s electron has spin +x and Bob’s electron has spin -x. In state IIa, Alice’s electron has spin -x and Bob’s electron has spin +x. Therefore, if Alice measures +x, the system collapses into Ia, and Bob will get -x. If Alice measures -x, the system collapses into IIa, and Bob will get +x.

In quantum mechanics, the x-spin and z-spin are “incompatible observables”, which means that there is a Heisenberg uncertainty principle operating between them: a quantum state cannot possess a definite value for both variables. Suppose Alice measures the z-spin and obtains +z, so that the quantum state collapses into state I. Now, instead of measuring the z-spin as well, Bob measures the x-spin. According to quantum mechanics, when the system is in state I, Bob’s x-spin measurement will have a 50% probability of producing +x and a 50% probability of -x. Furthermore, it is fundamentally impossible to predict which outcome will appear until Bob actually performs the measurement.

Incidentally, although we have used spin as an example, many types of physical quantities — what quantum mechanics refers to as “observables” — can be used to produce quantum entanglement. The original EPR paper used momentum for the observable. Actual experimental realizations of the EPR scenario often use the polarization of photons, because it is easy to prepare and to measure.

Reality and completeness
We will now introduce two concepts used by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, which are crucial to their attack on quantum mechanics: (i) the elements of physical reality and (ii) the completeness of a physical theory.

The authors did not directly address the philosophical meaning of an “element of physical reality”. Instead, they made the assumption that if the value of any physical quantity of a system can be predicted with absolute certainty prior to performing a measurement or otherwise disturbing it, then that quantity corresponds to an element of physical reality. Note that the converse is not assumed to be true; there may be other ways for elements of physical reality to exist, but this will not affect the argument.

Next, EPR defined a “complete physical theory” as one in which every element of physical reality is accounted for. The aim of their paper was to show, using these two definitions, that quantum mechanics is not a complete physical theory.

Let us see how these concepts apply to the above thought experiment. Suppose Alice decides to measure the value of spin along the z-axis (we’ll call this the z-spin.) After Alice performs her measurement, the z-spin of Bob’s electron is definitely known, so it is an element of physical reality. Similarly, if Alice decides to measure spin along the x-axis, the x-spin of Bob’s electron is an element of physical reality after her measurement.

We have seen that a quantum state cannot possess a definite value for both x-spin and z-spin. If quantum mechanics is a complete physical theory in the sense given above, x-spin and z-spin cannot be elements of reality at the same time. This means that Alice’s decision — whether to perform her measurement along the x- or z-axis — has an instantaneous effect on the elements of physical reality at Bob’s location. However, this violates another principle, that of locality.

Locality in the EPR experiment
The principle of locality states that physical processes occurring at one place should have no immediate effect on the elements of reality at another location. At first sight, this appears to be a reasonable assumption to make, as it seems to be a consequence of special relativity, which states that information can never be transmitted faster than the speed of light without violating causality. It is generally believed that any theory which violates causality would also be internally inconsistent, and thus deeply unsatisfactory.

It turns out that quantum mechanics violates the principle of locality without violating causality. Causality is preserved because there is no way for Alice to transmit messages (i.e. information) to Bob by manipulating her measurement axis. Whichever axis she uses, she has a 50% probability of obtaining “+” and 50% of obtaining “-”, completely at random; according to quantum mechanics, it is fundamentally impossible for her to influence what result she gets. Furthermore, Bob is only able to perform his measurement once: there is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, known as the “no cloning theorem”, which makes it impossible for him to make a million copies of the electron he receives, perform a spin measurement on each, and look at the statistical distribution of the results. Therefore, in the one measurement he is allowed to make, there is a 50% probability of getting “+” and 50% of getting “-”, regardless of whether or not his axis is aligned with Alice’s.

However, the principle of locality appeals powerfully to physical intuition, and Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen were unwilling to abandon it. Einstein derided the quantum mechanical predictions as “spooky action at a distance”. The conclusion they drew was that quantum mechanics is not a complete theory.

It should be noted that the word locality has several different meanings in physics. For example, in quantum field theory “locality” means that quantum fields at different points of space do not interact with one another. However, quantum field theories that are “local” in this sense violate the principle of locality as defined by EPR.

Resolving the paradox

Hidden variables
There are several possible ways to resolve the EPR paradox. The one suggested by EPR is that quantum mechanics, despite its success in a wide variety of experimental scenarios, is actually an incomplete theory. In other words, there is some as-yet-undiscovered theory of nature to which quantum mechanics acts as a kind of statistical approximation (albeit an exceedingly successful one). Unlike quantum mechanics, the more complete theory contains variables corresponding to all the “elements of reality”. There must be some unknown mechanism acting on these variables to give rise to the observed effects of “non-commuting quantum observables”, i.e. the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Such a theory is called a hidden variable theory.

To illustrate this idea, we can formulate a very simple hidden variable theory for the above thought experiment. One supposes that the quantum spin-singlet states emitted by the source are actually approximate descriptions for “true” physical states possessing definite values for the z-spin and x-spin. In these “true” states, the electron going to Bob always has spin values opposite to the electron going to Alice, but the values are otherwise completely random. For example, the first pair emitted by the source might be “(+z, -x) to Alice and (-z, +x) to Bob”, the next pair “(-z, -x) to Alice and (+z, +x) to Bob”, and so forth. Therefore, if Bob’s measurement axis is aligned with Alice’s, he will necessarily get the opposite of whatever Alice gets; otherwise, he will get “+” and “-” with equal probability.

Assuming we restrict our measurements to the z and x axes, such a hidden variable theory is experimentally indistinguishable from quantum mechanics. In reality, of course, there is an (uncountably) infinite number of axes along which Alice and Bob can perform their measurements, so there has to be an infinite number of independent hidden variables! However, this is not a serious problem; we have formulated a very simplistic hidden variable theory, and a more sophisticated theory might be able to patch it up. It turns out that there is a much more serious challenge to the idea of hidden variables.

Bell’s inequality
In 1964, John Bell showed that the predictions of quantum mechanics in the EPR thought experiment are actually slightly different from the predictions of a very broad class of hidden variable theories. Roughly speaking, quantum mechanics predicts much stronger statistical correlations between the measurement results performed on different axes than the hidden variable theories. These differences, expressed using inequality relations known as “Bell’s inequalities”, are in principle experimentally detectable. For a detailed derivation of this result, see the article on Bell’s theorem.

After the publication of Bell’s paper, a variety of experiments were devised to test Bell’s inequalities. (As mentioned above, these experiments generally rely on photon polarization measurements.) All the experiments conducted to date have found behavior in line with the predictions of standard quantum mechanics.

However, the book is not completely closed on this issue. First of all, Bell’s theorem does not apply to all possible “realist” theories. It is possible to construct theories that escape its implications, and are therefore indistinguishable from quantum mechanics, though these theories are generally non-local — they are believed to violate both causality and the rules of special relativity. Some workers in the field have also attempted to formulate hidden variable theories that exploit loopholes in actual experiments, such as the assumptions made in interpreting experimental data. However, no one has ever been able to formulate a local realist theory that can reproduce all the results of quantum mechanics.

Implications for quantum mechanics
Most physicists today believe that quantum mechanics is correct, and that the EPR paradox is only a “paradox” because classical intuitions do not correspond to physical reality. Several different conclusions can be drawn from this, depending on which interpretation of quantum mechanics one uses. In the old Copenhagen interpretation, one concludes that the principle of locality does not hold, and that instantaneous wavefunction collapse really does occur. In the many-worlds interpretation, locality is preserved, and the effects of the measurements arise from the splitting of the observers into different “histories”.

The EPR paradox has deepened our understanding of quantum mechanics by exposing the fundamentally non-classical characteristics of the measurement process. Prior to the publication of the EPR paper, a measurement was often visualized as a physical disturbance inflicted directly on the measured system. For instance, when measuring the position of an electron, one imagines shining a light on it, thus disturbing the electron and producing the quantum mechanical uncertainties in its position. Such explanations, which are still encountered in popular expositions of quantum mechanics, are debunked by the EPR paradox, which shows that a “measurement” can be performed on a particle without disturbing it directly, by performing a measurement on a distant entangled particle.

Technologies relying on quantum entanglement are now being developed. In quantum cryptography, entangled particles are used to transmit signals that cannot be eavesdropped upon without leaving a trace. In quantum computation, entangled quantum states are used to perform computations in parallel, which may allow certain calculations to be performed much more quickly than they ever could be with classical computers.

The quantum mind or quantum consciousness is a protoscientific hypothesis that posits a connection between consciousness, neurobiology and quantum mechanics. There are many blank areas in understanding the brain dynamics and especially how it gives rise to consciousness. The hypothesis claims that quantum mechanics is capable of explaining conscious experience.

Introduction
The nature of consciousness and its place in the universe remain unknown. Classical models view consciousness as computation among the brain’s neurons but as yet has failed to describe an exact mechanism. Quantum processes in the brain have been invoked as explanations for consciousness and its enigmatic features. Some theories have been subjected to experimental tests and evidence indicating that quantum non-locality is occurring in conscious and subconscious brain functions has been claimed, however these results have not gained wide acceptance.

Supporters argue that the brain can no longer be seen as simply a vast piece of organic clockwork, but as a subtle device amplifying quantum events and that quantum computation would surely be advantageous from an evolutionary perspective, and biology has had 4 billion years to solve the decoherence problem and evolve quantum mechanisms.

The main argumentative line can be summed up as follows: Human thought, based on the Gödel result, is sound, yet non-algorithmic, and the human thinker is aware of or conscious of the contents of these thoughts. The only recognized instances of non-algorithmic processes in the universe, based on accepted physical theories are purely random or the reduction of the quantum mechanical state vector. Randomness is not promising as the source of the non-algorithmicity needed to account for consciousness, therefore certain quantum mechanical phenomena must be responsible.

Critics deride this comparison as a mere “minimization of mysteries,” ( A term coined by David Chalmers, the idea that since quantum and consciousness are both mysteries, they must be related.) and point out that the brain is too warm for quantum computation, which in the technological realm requires extreme cold to avoid “decoherence” (i.e. the loss of seemingly delicate quantum states by interaction with the environment.)

Some modern “New Age” writers have used the theory to support the belief that the human mind commands special powers - psychic forces - that transcend the material universe.

Various quantum theories of mind

Vibrations of the aether
A relation between consciousness and quantum effects has been pondered for nearly a century, and even before that Newton himself had proposed that vibrations of the aether might be excited by, and in turn, excite the brain. This speculation forms the conceptual foundation for the modern study of quantum consciousness.

Modulating quantum jumps
The first modern pioneer of this field was biologist Alfred Lotka, who in 1924, proposed that the mind controls the brain by modulating the quantum jumps that would otherwise lead to a completely random existence. However, the first detailed quantum model of consciousness was by a physicist, Evan Walker. In 1970 he proposed a synaptic tunneling model in which electrons can “tunnel” between adjacent neurons, thereby creating a virtual neural network overlapping the real one. It is this virtual nervous system that for Walker produces consciousness and that it can direct the behavior of the real nervous system. In short the real nervous system operates by means of synaptic messages while the virtual one operates by means of quantum tunneling.

Bose-Einstein condensates
In 1989 the British psychiatrist Ian Marshall examined similarities between the holistic properties of Bose-Einstein condensates and those of consciousness. In 1968 the British physicist Herbert Fröhlich had suggested that condensation similar to Bose-Einstein can be achieved in Nature by biological organisms which are in a non-equilibrium state. In Marshall’s hypothesis, the brain contains a Frölich-style condensate, and, whenever the condensate is excited by an electrical field, conscious experience occurs. Marshall theory contends that the brain would maintain its dynamical coherence due precisely to the properties of such a condensate.

Synaptic quantum uncertainty
John Carew Eccles speculated in 1986 that the synapses in the cortex may respond in a probabilistic manner to neural excitation; a probability that, given the small dimensions of synapses, could be governed by quantum uncertainty.

Consciousness as the observer
The philosopher Michael Lockwood noted that special relativity implies that mental states must be physical states. He argued that sensations must be intrinsic attributes of physical brain states. Thus in quantum terms each sensation corresponds to an observable event in the brain; this makes the observer, in quantum mechanics, conscious of the physical world.

Conscious matter
Nick Herbert, a physicist, has been even more specific on the similarities between Quantum Theory and consciousness. Herbert thinks that consciousness is a pervasive process in nature and that it is as fundamental a component of the universe as elementary particles and forces. James Culbertson, a pioneer of research on robots, has even speculated that consciousness may be a relativistic feature of space-time. In his opinion, too, consciousness permeates all of nature, so that every object has a degree of consciousness. This view is referred to as Conscious Matter.

A tripartite model
The American physicist Henry Stapp’s model of consciousness is tripartite in that each event is driven by three quantum processes operating in concert. The first a mechanical, deterministic process that predicts the state of the system given its state at a given time. The second is conscious choice. In the formal Quantum Theory it is implied that something can be known only when Nature is asked a question. This implies,the third that in turn consciousness has a degree of control over Nature because each time something is learned there is a change in the state of the universe, which directly corresponds to a change in the state of the brain. In Q.M. terms; there occurs a reduction of the wave function compatible with the fact that something has been learned.

Quantum solitons
Stuart Hameroff, A. Nip, M. Porter and J. A. Tuszynski have claimed that the neuronal cytoskeletons are primary residence for consciousness and that the specific protein organization and functions help the quantum mind control overall brain dynamics according to the received electromagnetic input. He proposes that when the microtubules strongly interact with the local electromagnetic field solitons could be generated and could propagate along intraprotein conduction aromatic acid pathways. Thus quantum soliton creation could be induced in microtubules via interaction with the local electromagnetic field. See Quantum brain dynamics

Thought as a hologram
Many properties of the brain are the same properties that are commonly associated with holograms: memory is distributed in the brain and memories do not disappear all of a sudden, but slowly fade away. To psychologist Karl Pribram, a sensory perception is transformed in a “brain wave”, a pattern of electromagnetical activation that propagates through the brain just like the wavefront in a liquid. The various waves that travel through the brain can interfere. The interference of existing waves (a memory), and a fresh perceptual wave (sensory input) generates a structure that resembles a hologram that is experienced as thought. Pribram refers to this as Holonomic brain theory

A string theory model
A string theory model was developed by D. Nanopoulos in 1996 that was further refined into a QED-Cavity model by N. Mavromatos in 2000 suggesting dissipationless energy transfer and biological quantum teleportation.

Quantum neurophysics
The Heisenberg and Von Neumann tradition has always viewed the brain as a quantum measuring device but others, claim that brain substrates can hold second-order quantum fields, which cannot be treated as mere measuring devices. This is the position of Kunio Yasue, a Japanese physicist who has developed quantum neurophysics. Yasue presents the brain as a macroscopic quantum system wherein the classical world can originate from quantum processes. Not a connectionist, the fact that neurons are organized inside the brain is not relevant to Yasue. See Quantum brain dynamics for references.

Space-time theories of consciousness
Alex Green has developed an empirical theory of phenomenal consciousness that proposes that conscious experience can be described as a five-dimensional manifold. As in Broad’s hypothesis, space-time can contain vectors of zero length between two points in space and time because of an imaginary time coordinate. A 3D volume of brain activity over a short period of time would have the time extended geometric form of a conscious observation in 5D. Green considers imaginary time to be incompatible with the modern physical description of the world, and proposes that the imaginary time coordinate is a property of the observer and unobserved things (things governed by quantum mechanics), whereas the real time of general relativity is a property of observed things.

Quantum spin-mediated consciousness
The spin-mediated consciousness theory, initially proposed by biophysicist Huping Hu with his collaborator Maoxin Wu is a theory that says quantum spin is the seat of consciousness and the linchpin between mind and the brain, that is, spin is the mind-pixel. According to this theory, Quantum consciousness is intrinsically connected to the spin process and emerges from the self-referential collapses of spin states and the unity of mind is achieved by entanglement of these mind-pixels.

The Orch OR model
The theory espoused by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff is Quantum-gravitational Consciousness, and currently it is one of the best developed and the most popular. The Orch OR model presumes that the microtubule network within neurons acts like a quantum computer. The tubulins are in superposition and the collapse of the wave function is driven by the quantum gravity. Penrose and Hameroff believe that conscious information is encoded in space-time geometry at the fundamental Planck scale and that a self-organizing Planck-scale process results in awareness.

M-theory
This approach by B. Flanagan builds on his work in mind/brain identity theory, positing an identity between photonic fields and their concomitant perceptual fields. Pointing to the symmetries and phase relations observed with color and sound, this work was extended to include considerations from Kaluza-Klein theory, gauge theory, fiber bundle theory, string theory, Chern-Simons theory and M-theory.

Quantum mysticism
The implications of Quantum mind theories have not been missed by believers of the paranormal, anxious for scientific justification of their beliefs. Some have claimed that quantum mechanics has eliminated the separation between mind, body and the world. The term “quantum consciousness” now shows up in the popular literature in connection with astrology, homeopathy, ghosts, angels, precognition, telepathy, alien abduction, acupuncture, and even how to achieve multiple orgasms. The writings of Fritjof Capra and Deepak Chopra have been instrumental in popularizing the view that there exists a connection between mysticism and quantum mechanics.

Criticisms
Broadly, the arguments against the possibility are:

First, comparatively large and high temperature items like neurons just do not exist in persisting states of linear superposition capable of exhibiting interference effects, and quantum mechanics offers no reason to think they should. All brain scale systems spend their time in well defined classical states; their behavior, even after interaction with thoroughly quantum systems like a decaying atoms, can be described perfectly well with ordinary probability calculus. It turns out that effective classicality extends, under almost all conditions, far below the neural level to that of medium-sized molecules.

Secondly, the truth of decoherence is that, regardless of whether there are any conscious observers around or not, objects which would be expected to behave in an essentially classical manner, do exactly that. Interaction between objects and their environments, both external and internal, does the job of ‘observation’ erroneously accorded only to conscious observers, effecting a process which is experimentally indistinguishable from state vector reduction.

Thirdly, none of the theories explains how the activity of single synapses enters the dynamics of neural assemblies, and they leave mental causation of quantum processes as a mere claim. Thus they are essentially unsatisfactory with regard to a sound formal basis and concrete empirical scenarios and lack compelling argument or evidence that requires that quantum mechanics play a central role in human consciousness.

Pseudonomenalism
Quantum theories of mind are among the few classes of theories acceptable in the philosophical stances of pseudonomenalism and mind/brain identity theory.

Many-minds interpretation
There is another type of quantum theory of mind called the many-minds interpretation that is invoked as a conservative version of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory and does not involve collapse of the QM wave function.

Consciousness causes collapse
Consciousness causes collapse is the speculative theory that observation by a conscious observer is responsible for the wavefunction collapse and that the process of measurement in quantum mechanics is consciousness itself.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Quantum mind”.

Book Description
“Scientists other than quantum physicists often fail to comprehend the enormity of the conceptual change wrought by quantum theory in our basic conception of the nature of matter,” writes Henry Stapp. Stapp is a leading quantum physicist who has given particularly careful thought to the implications of the theory that lies at the heart of modern physics. In this book, which contains several of his key papers as well as new material, he focuses on the problem of consciousness and explains how quantum mechanics allows causally effective conscious thought to be combined in a natural way with the physical brain made of neurons and atoms. The book is divided into four sections. The first consists of an extended introduction. Key foundational and somewhat more technical papers are included in the second part, together with a clear exposition of the “orthodox” interpretation of quantum mechanics. The third part addresses, in a non-technical fashion, the implications of the theory for some of the most profound questions that mankind has contemplated: How does the world come to be just what it is and not something else? How should humans view themselves in a quantum universe? What will be the impact on society of the revised scientific image of the nature of man? The final part contains a mathematical appendix for the specialist and a glossary of important terms and ideas for the interested layman. This new edition has been updated and extended to address recent debates about consciousness.

Why Classical Mechanics Cannot Naturally Accommodate Consciousness_But Quantum Mechanics Can by Henry P. Stapp

Advanced Reading

Quantum suicide

In quantum mechanics, quantum suicide is a thought experiment which was independently proposed in 1987 by Hans Moravec and in 1988 by Bruno Marchal, and further developed by Max Tegmark in 1998, that attempts to distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger’s cat experiment. The experiment essentially involves looking at the Schrödinger’s cat experiment from the point of view of the cat.

In this experiment, a physicist sits in front of a gun which is triggered or not triggered depending on the decay of some radioactive atom. With each run of the experiment there is a 50-50 chance that the gun will be triggered and the physicist will die. If the Copenhagen interpretation is correct, then the gun will eventually be triggered and the physicist will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct then at each run of the experiment the physicist will be split into a world in which he lives and one in which he dies. In the worlds where the physicist dies, he will cease to exist. However, from the point of view of the non-dead physicist, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the physicist will notice that he never seems to die.

Unfortunately, the physicist will be unable to report the results because, from the viewpoint of an outside observer, the probabilities will be the same whether many worlds or Copenhagen is correct.

A variation of this thought experiment suggests a controversial outcome known as quantum immortality, which is the argument that if the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct then a conscious observer can never cease to exist.

Quantum immortality

Quantum immortality is the controversial speculation deriving from the quantum suicide thought experiment that states the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that conscious beings are immortal.

Explanation of the thought experiment
Imagine that a physicist detonates a nuclear bomb beside him. In almost all parallel universes, the nuclear explosion will vaporize the physicist. However, there should be a small set of alternative universes in which the physicist somehow survives (ie. the set of universes which support a “miraculous” survival scenario). The idea behind quantum immortality is that the physicist will remain alive in, and thus able to experience, at least one of the universes in this set, even though these universes form a tiny subset of all possible universes. Over time the physicist would therefore consider himself to be living forever. There are some parallels with this concept in the anthropic principle.

Another example is that provided by quantum suicide where a physicist sits in front of a gun which is triggered, or not triggered, by radioactive decay. With each run of the experiment there is a fifty-fifty chance that the gun will be triggered and the physicist will die. If the Copenhagen interpretation is correct, then the gun will eventually be triggered and the physicist will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct, then at each run of the experiment the physicist will be split into a world in which he lives and one in which he dies. In the worlds where the physicist dies, he will cease to exist. However, from the point of view of the physicist, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the physicist will notice that he never seems to die, therefore “proving” himself to be immortal, at least from his own point of view in probability.

strong>Required assumptions and controversy
Proponents point out that while it is highly speculative, quantum immortality violates no known laws of physics assuming two controversial assumptions are true:

1. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is the correct one, as opposed to the Copenhagen interpretation, which does not indicate the existence of parallel universes.

2. All of the possible scenarios in which the proposed physicist (or any entity being argued about in the thought experiment) can die support at least a small subset of survival scenarios.

A potential criticism of the theory is that the second assumption is not a necessary consequence of the many-worlds interpretation and may require the violation of laws that are still thought to be conserved across *all* possible realities. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics does not necessarily imply that “everything is possible”, only that all outcomes that *are* possible will branch off from any given instant in time. Most physical laws of the universe still cannot be broken - for example, the second law of thermodynamics is still considered to be conserved in all probabilities, theoretically preventing a parallel universe in which this law is violated from ever branching off. This has implications that, from the point of view of the physicist, it is possible to reach a particular configuration of reality where the physicist’s survival actually becomes impossible, because a survival scenario in that reality would at that point require a violation of a law of the universe that is not thought to be violated in any possible reality.

For example, in the nuclear-bomb scenario above, once the bomb detonates, it is difficult to effectively describe a scenario in which the physicist continues living that does not violate basic biological principles. Living cells simply cannot remain alive at the temperatures found at the core of a nuclear reaction under any known subsets of modern science. For quantum immortality to be true, either the bomb would have to misfire (or otherwise not detonate) or an event would have to take place which made use of scientific principles that are not yet proven or discovered. Another example is natural biological death from old age, which may not be escapable in any parallel universe (at least without more advanced technology than is currently known).

Another potentially problematic area is that quantum immortality would also imply that a conscious being could “cause” itself to experience highly improbable events in its own probability simply by repeatedly placing itself in situations in which it is highly likely that the being will die. Even though in most parallel universes the being would die, the only ones that the being could possibly subjectively experience would be the ones in which it experiences the unlikely survival scenario. This may turn out to be a violation of some sort of property of causality, the nature of which is still not well understood in quantum physics.

Although quantum immortality is motivated by the quantum suicide thought experiment, Max Tegmark, one of the inventors of this experiment, has stated that he does not believe that quantum immortality is a consequence of his work. He argues that under any sort of normal conditions, before someone dies they undergo a period of diminishment of consciousness, a non-quantum decline (which can be anywhere from seconds to minutes to years), and hence there is no way of establishing a continuous existence from this world to an alternate one in which the person continues to exist.

Fictional depictions
The Greg Egan novel Quarantine explores topics related to quantum immortality.

Other science fiction stories exploring these and related ideas include “All the Myriad Ways” by Larry Niven, and “Divided by Infinity” by Robert Charles Wilson.

The film Donnie Darko loosely explores quantum immortality.

Terry Pratchett’s short story Death, and What Comes Next has a philosopher arguing the principle with Death, who has come for him.

In the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series, it could be argued that the Infinite Improbability Drive resembles this idea when the Heart of Gold rescues Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect - Ford and Arthur should certainly die when thrown out of an airlock into outer space - but instead, they experience a rescue wherein the basic laws of the universe seem to have been rewritten, which is similar to what some conjecture would happen were a consciousness to perceive its death as so inevitable as to require a massively improbable event.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Quantum suicide”.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Quantum immortality”.

Quantum Zeno effect

In plainer language this is about the theory that the more something happens, the more likely it is to continue happening. I use it here in reference to the effects of hearing, reading and practicing the ways in which we can accelerate our process toward enlightenment. In Dr. Hawkins last lecture he discusses the theory in regard to that journey. If we are diligent in our practice, we are infinitely collapsing the wave function and our eventual enlightenment is assured…Myswizard

The quantum Zeno effect is a quantum mechanical phenomenon first described by E.C. George Sudarshan and Baidyanaith Misra of the University of Texas in 1977. It describes that situation that an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay. This occurs because every measurement causes the wavefunction to “collapse” to a pure eigenstate of the measurement basis.

Given a system in a state A, which is the eigenstate of some measurement operator. Say the system under free time evolution will decay with a certain probability into state B. If measurements are made periodically, with some finite interval between each one, at each measurement, the wavefunction collapses to an eigenstate of the measurement operator. Between the measurements, the system evolves away from this eigenstate into a superposition state of the states A and B. When the superposition state is measured, it will again collapse, either back into state A as in the first measurement, or away into state B. The probability that it will collapse back into the same state A is higher if the system has had less time to evolve away from it. In the limit as the time between measurements goes to zero, the probability of a collapse back to the original state A goes to one. Hence, the system doesn’t evolve from A to B.

In reality, collapse of the wavefunction is not a discrete, instantaneous event. A measurement could be approximated by strongly coupling the quantum system to the noisy thermal environment for a brief period of time. The time it takes for the wavefunction to “collapse” is related to the decoherence time of the system when coupled to the environment. The stronger the coupling is, and the shorter the decoherence time, the faster it will collapse. So in the decoherence picture, the quantum Zeno effect corresponds to the limit where a quantum system is continuously coupled to the environment, and where that coupling is infinitely strong, and where the “environment” is an infinitely large source of thermal randomness.

Experimentally, strong suppression of the evolution of a quantum system due to environmental coupling has been observed in a number of microscopic systems. One such experiment was performed in October 1989 by Itano, Heinzen, Bollinger and Wineland at NIST (PDF). Approximately 5000 9Be+ ions were stored in a cylindrical Penning trap and laser cooled to below 250mK. A resonant RF pulse was applied which, if applied alone, would cause the entire ground state population to migrate into an excited state. After the pulse was applied, the ions were monitored for photons emitted due to relaxation. The ion trap was then regularly “measured” by applying a sequence of ultraviolet pulses, during the RF pulse. As expected, the ultraviolet pulses suppressed the evolution of the system into the excited state. The results were in good agreement with theoretical models.

The quantum Zeno effect takes its name from Zeno’s arrow paradox, which is the argument that since an arrow in flight does not move during any single instant, it couldn’t possibly be moving overall.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Quantum Zeno Effect”.

Consciousness

Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one’s environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neurology, and cognitive science.

Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness which is experience itself and access consciousness which is the processing of the things in experience (Block 2004), while others consider this distinction to be mistaken (Dennett 1991). Many cultures and religious traditions place the seat of consciousness in a soul separate from the body. Conversely, many scientists and philosophers consider consciousness to be intimately linked to the neural functioning of the brain dictating the way in which the world is experienced.

Humans (and often other animals as well) are variously said to possess consciousness, self- awareness, and a mind, that contains our sensations, perceptions, dreams, lucid dreams, inner speech and imagination etc.. Each of us has a subjective view. There are many debates about the extent to which the mind constructs or experiences the outer world, the passage of time, and free will.

An understanding of necessary preconditions for consciousness in the human brain may allow us to address important ethical questions. For instance, to what extent are non-human animals conscious? At what point in fetal development does consciousness begin? Can machines ever achieve conscious states? These issues are of great interest to those concerned with the ethical treatment of other beings, be they animals, fetuses, or in the future, machines.

In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to one’s environment; this contrasts with being asleep or being in a coma. The term ‘level of consciousness’ denotes how consciousness seems to vary during anesthesia and during various states of mind such as day dreaming, lucid dreaming, imagining etc. Nonconsciousness exists when consciousness is not present. There is speculation, especially amongst religious groups, that consciousness may exist after death or before birth.

Etymology
“Consciousness” derives from Latin “conscientia”, which primarily means moral conscience. Literally, “conscientia” means knowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridic texts by writers such as Cicero. Here, conscientia is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else. In Christian theology, conscience stands for the moral conscience in which our actions and intentions are registered and which is only fully known to god. Medieval writers such as Thomas Aquinas describe the conscientia as the act by which we apply practical and moral knowledge to our own actions (Aquinas, De Veritate 17,1 c.a.). René Descartes was the first to use “conscientia” in a way that does not seem to fit this traditional meaning, and consequently, the translators of his writings in other languages like French and English coined new words in order to denote merely psychological consciousness. These are, for instance, “conscience psychologique”, “consciousness”, and “Bewusstsein”. See Catherine G. Davies, Conscience as Consciousness, Oxford 1990, and Hennig, Cartesian Conscientia.

Consciousness and language
Because humans express their conscious states using language, it is tempting to equate language abilities and consciousness. There are, however, speechless humans (infants, feral children, aphasics), to whom consciousness is attributed despite language lost or not yet acquired. Moreover, the study of brain states of non-linguistic primates, in particular the macaques, has been used extensively by scientists and philosophers in their quest for the neural correlates of the contents of consciousness.

Cognitive neuroscience approaches
Modern investigations into and discoveries about consciousness are based on psychological statistical studies and case studies of consciousness states and the deficits caused by lesions, stroke, injury, or surgery that disrupt the normal functioning of human senses and cognition. These discoveries suggest that the mind is a complex structure derived from various localized functions that are bound together with a unitary awareness.

Several studies point to common mechanisms in different clinical conditions that lead to loss of consciousness. Persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a condition in which an individual loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain, but maintains sleep-wake cycles with full or partial autonomic functions. Studies comparing PVS with healthy, awake subjects consistently demonstrate an impaired connectivity between the deeper (brainstem and thalamic) and the upper (cortical) areas of the brain. In addition, it is agreed that the general brain activity in the cortex is lower in the PVS state. Some electroneurobiological interpretations of consciousness characterize this loss of consciousness as a loss of the ability to resolve time (similar to playing an old phonographic record at very slow or very rapid speed), along a continuum that starts with inattention, continues on sleep and arrives to coma and death.

Loss of consciousness also occurs in other conditions, such as general (tonic-clonic) epileptic seizures, in general anaesthesia, maybe even in deep (slow wave) sleep. The currently best supported hypotheses about such cases of loss of consciousness (or loss of time resolution) focus on the need for 1) a widespread cortical network, including particularly the frontal, parietal and temporal cortices, and 2) cooperation between the deep layers of the brain, especially the thalamus, and the upper layers; the cortex. Such hypotheses go under the common term “globalist theories” of consciousness, due to the claim for a widespread, global network necessary for consciousness to interact with non-mental reality in the first place.

Brain chemistry affects human consciousness. Sleeping drugs (such as Midazolam = Dormicum) can bring the brain from the awake condition (conscious) to the sleep (unconscious). Wake-up drugs such as Anexate reverse this process. Many other drugs (such as heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA) have a consciousness-changing effect.

There is a neural link between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, known as the corpus callosum. This link is sometimes surgically severed to control severe seizures in epilepsy patients. This procedure was first performed by Roger Sperry in the 1960’s. Tests of these patients have shown that after the link is completely severed, the hemispheres are no longer able to communicate, leading to certain problems which usually arise only in test conditions. For example, while the left side of the brain can verbally describe what is going on in the right visual field, the right hemisphere is esentially mute, instead relying on its spatial abilities to interact with the world on the left visual field. Some say it is as if two separate minds now share the same skull, but both still represent themselves as a single “I” to the outside world.

The bilateral removal of the Centromedian nucleus (part of the Intra-laminar nucleus of the Thalamus) appears to abolish consciousness, causing coma, PVS, severe mutism and other features that mimic brain death. The centromedian nucleus is also one of the principal sites of action of general anaesthetics and anti-psychotic drugs.

Neurophysiological studies in awake, behaving monkeys performed by neuroscientists (e.g., Steven Wise, Mikhail Lebedev, Nikos Logothetis) point to advanced cortical areas in prefrontal cortex and temporallobes as carriers of neuronal correlate of consciousness.

Philosophical approaches
Some philosophers suggest that consciousness resists or even defies definition. Others believe it can be usefully distinguished between phenomenal consciousness and access or psychological consciousness, while still others disagree. There are many philosophical stances on consciousness, including: behaviorism, dualism, idealism, functionalism, phenomenalism, physicalism, emergentism, and mysticism.

Phenomenal and access consciousness
Philosophers call our current experience phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is simply experience, it is moving, coloured forms, sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses at the centre. These experiences, considered independently of any impact on behavior, are called qualia. The hard problem of consciousness was formulated by Chalmers in 1996, dealing with the issue of “how to explain a state of phenomenal consciousness in terms of its neurological basis” (Block 2004). Daniel Dennett(1988) identifies qualia with the results of judgements and consequent behaviour, he extends this analysis (Dennett (1996)) by arguing that phenomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of access consciousness, and hence denies the existence of both qualia and the “hard problem”.

Access consciousness is the phenomenon whereby information in our minds is accessible for verbal report, reasoning, and the control of behavior. So when we perceive, information about what we perceive is often access conscious; when we introspect, information about our thoughts is access conscious; when we remember, information about the past (e.g. something that we learned) is often access conscious; and so on. Chalmers thinks that access consciousness is less mysterious than phenomenal consciousness, so that it is held to pose one of the easy problems of consciousness. Dennett disagrees, asserting that the totality of consciousness can be understood in terms of impact on behavior, as studied through heterophenomenology.

Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access consciousness are known as subconscious events.

The description and location of phenomenal consciousness
Although it is the conventional wisdom that consciousness cannot be defined, philosophers have been describing phenomenal consciousness for centuries. Rene Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy in the seventeenth century, and this contains extensive descriptions of what it is to be conscious. Descartes described conscious experience as imaginings and perceptions laid out in space and time that are viewed from a point. Each thing appears as a result of some quality (qualia) such as colour, smell etc. Other philosophers, such as Nicholas Malebranche, John Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, also agreed with much of this description, although some avoid mentioning the viewing point. The extension of things in time was considered in more detail by Kant and James. Kant wrote that “only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time (simultaneously) or at different times (successively)”. William James stressed the extension of experience in time and said that time is “the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible”. These philosophers also go on to describe dreams, thoughts, emotions etc.

When we look around a room or have a dream, things are laid out in space and time and viewed as if from a point. However, when philosophers and scientists consider the location of the form and contents of this phenomenal consciousness there are fierce disagreements. As an example, Descartes proposed that the contents were brain activity seen by a non-physical place without extension (the Res Cogitans) which he identified as the soul. This idea is known as ‘Cartesian Dualism’. Another example is found in the work of Thomas Reid who thought the contents of consciousness are the world itself which becomes conscious experience in some way. This concept is a type of Direct realism. The precise physical substrate of conscious experience in the world, such as photons, quantum fields etc. is usually not specified. Other philosophers, such as George Berkeley, have proposed that the contents of consciousness are an aspect of minds and do not involve matter at all. This is a type of Idealism. Yet others, such as Leibniz, have considered that each point in the universe is endowed with conscious content. This is a form of Panpsychism. The concept of the things in conscious experience being impressions in the brain is a type of representationalism and representationalism can be a form of indirect realism.

Some philosophers, such as David Armstrong and Daniel Dennett, believe that conscious experiences exist in terms of judgements or beliefs about things in the world, and is therefore meaningless except when separated from behavior, while other philosophers insist that experience constitute qualia which cannot be understood in terms of belief.

It is sometimes held that consciousness emerges from the complexity of brain processing (see for instance the Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness). The general label ‘emergence’ applies to new phenomena that emerge from a physical basis without the connection between the two explicitly specified. Some theorists hold that phenomenal consciousness poses an explanatory gap, and have proposed scientific theories such as Quantum mind, space-time theories of consciousness and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness, to explain the correspondence between brain activity and experience. As yet there is little evidence from brain studies to support these theories. Evidence from parapsychology of psychokinesis or telepathy, if substantiatied, might support the theory that the location of consciousness is not confined to the brain.

Access consciousness
There have been numerous approaches to the processes that act on conscious experience from instant to instant. Philosophers who have explored this problem include Gerald Edelman, G. Spencer-Brown, Edmund Husserl and Daniel Dennett.

Some philosophers have concentrated on reflexive processes to link one instant to the next, some on discriminations, differerences and differentiation between things in conscious experience and and others on the overall behaviour of the organism.

G. Spencer-Brown provides an example of the analysis of consciousness as a process, the process in this case being differentiating one thing from another.G. Spencer-Brown proposes in Laws of Form that the root of cognition is the ability to perceive dualism, i.e., in its most simple construct, the capability of differentiating a “this” from a “that.” A mathematician, he captured this concept of elementary content-in-context in an abstraction: an algebraic and tautological symbol he referred to as the “Mark,” also referred to as a “distinction.” Francisco Varela, a co-founder of the Integral Institute, and Humberto Maturana also identify “distinction” as the elementary act of cognition. By definition, this concept extends the notion of “consciousness” well beyond that solely evidenced by humans and lends itself to the idea of a “scale” of consciousness.

Physical approaches
Even at the dawn of Newtonian science, Leibniz and many others were suggesting physical theories of consciousness. Modern physical theories of consciousness can be divided into three types: theories to explain behaviour and access consciousness, theories to explain phenomenal consciousness and theories to explain the quantum mechanical (QM) Quantum mind. Theories that seek to explain behaviour are an everyday part of neuroscience, some of these theories of access consciousness, such as Edelman’s theory, contentiously identify phenomenal consciousness with reflex events in the brain. Theories that seek to explain phenomenal consciousness directly, such as Space-time theories of consciousness and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness, have been available for almost a century but have not as yet been confirmed by experiment. Theories that attempt to explain the QM measurement problem include Pribram and Bohm’s Holonomic brain theory, Hameroff and Penrose’s Orch-OR theory, Spin-Mediated Consciousness Theory and the Many-minds interpretation. Some of these QM theories offer descriptions of phenomenal consciousness as well as QM interpretations of access consciousness. None of the quantum mechanical theories has been confirmed by experiment, and there are philosopher who are that QM has no bearing on consciousness.

There is also a concerted effort in the field of Artificial Intelligence to create digital computer programs that can simulate consciousness.

Spiritual approaches
Spiritual approaches to consciousness involve the idea of altered states of consciousness or religious experience. Changes in the state of consciousness or a religious experience can occur spontaneously or as a result of religious observance. It is also maintained by some religions and religious factions that the universe itself is consciousness.

In shamanic practice the change in state of consciousness is induced by mind altering drugs or as a result of activities that induce trance. The experience that occurs is interpreted as entering a real, but parallel, world. In many polytheistic religions a change in emotional state is often attributed to the action of a god, for instance love was ruled by Aphrodite and Eros in Ancient Greek polytheism. In Hinduism the change in state is induced by the practice of yoga. Yoga means “joining” and is intended to produce a state of oneness between the practitioner and the divine. In Islam and Christianity the change of state can occur as a result of prayer or as a religious experience.

The change in state of consciousness in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam is reported to be quite similar. The pursuit of yoga and the Buddhist Jhanas involve feelings of oneness with the world that give rise to a state of rapture. This is also reported by those undergoing some forms of Christian (or Islamic) religious experience, for instance James (1902) provides the following report:

I cannot express it in any other way than to say that I did “lie down in the stream of life and let it flow over me.” I gave up all fear of any impending disease; I was perfectly willing and obedient. There was no intellectual effort, or train of thought. My dominant idea was: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me even as thou wilt,” and a perfect confidence that all would be well, that all was well. The creative life was flowing into me every instant, and I felt myself allied with the Infinite, in harmony, and full of the peace that passeth understanding. There was no place in my mind for a jarring body. I had no consciousness of time or space or persons; but only of love and happiness and faith.
Meditation is used in some forms of yoga such as Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Transcendental meditation, the Buddhist Jhanas, the Buddhist Immaterial Jhanas (there are several versions of the jhanas in different types of Buddhism), in the practices of Christian monks and Islamic scholars such as Sufis. Meditation can have a calming influence on practitioners as well as changing the state of consciousness. Therevada Buddhism views the Jhanas and some yogic practices view the early stages of meditation as a preliminary “serenity meditation” in which it is demonstrated that states such as rapture are delusions, products of mind rather than the soul. In most types of Buddhism serenity meditation is followed by a philosophical “insight meditation” that focusses on the idea that the universe is consciousness only, one that is perhaps indistinguishable from Monism.

Functions of consciousness
We generally agree that our fellow human beings are conscious and that much simpler life forms, such as bacteria, are not. Many of us attribute consciousness to higher-order animals such as dolphins and primates; academic research is investigating the extent to which animals are conscious. This suggests the hypothesis that consciousness has co-evolved with life, which would require it to have some sort of added value. People have therefore looked for specific functions of consciousness. Bernard Baars (1997) for instance states that “consciousness is a supremely functional adaptation” and suggests a variety of functions in which consciousness plays a role: prioritization of alternatives, problem solving, decision making, brain processes recruiting, action control, error detection, planning, learning, adaptation, context creation, and access to information. Antonio Damasio (1999) regards consciousness as part of an organism’s survival kit, allowing planned rather than instinctual responses. He also points out that awareness of self allows a concern for one’s own survival, which increases the drive to survive, although how far consciousness is involved in behaviour is an actively debated issue. Many psychologists, such as radical behaviourists, and many philosophers, such as those who support Ryle’s approach, would maintain that behaviour can be explained by non-conscious processes akin to artificial intelligence and might consider consciousness to be epiphenomenal or only weakly related to function.

Tests of consciousness
As there is still not a clear definition of consciousness, no empirical tests currently exist to test consciousness as a whole. Some have even argued that empirical tests of consciousness are intrinsically impossible. However, some researchers have devised tests to detect what they feel are certain aspects of consciousness. A test similar to this was used in the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick to see if a person was a robot or an actual human. In the Ridley Scott movie, Blade Runner, which was inspired by that book, it is known as the “Voigt-Kampf” test and tests the subject for empathy.

Turing Test
Alan Turing proposed what is now known as the Turing test to determine if a computer could simulate human conversation undetectably. This test is commonly cited in discussion of artificial intelligence. The application to consciousness is that, according to some philosophers, anything capable of passing the Turing test as well as a person is necessarily conscious. Other philosophers say that a philosophical zombie could pass the test yet fail to be conscious. This matter is heavily disputed. Still others take it for granted that computers can think since this is what they were designed to do; Edsger Dijkstra’s commented that “The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim”.

A thought experiment which is intended to show problems with the Turing Test is as follows. Imagine a computer in which are stored a very large number of questions and a very large number of actual human responses to these questions. If the number of questions and answers was large enough, then the computer would be able to mimic consciousness by a purely mechanical procedure. Of course, this is a purely hypothetical example, because any attempt to create a lookup table for all possible responses would entail a device of truly gigantic proportions. For this reasons, some consider this thought experiment to be misleading. See Chinese room.

Mirror test
With the mirror test, devised by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, one is interested in whether animals are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. Such self-recognition is said to be an indicator of consciousness. Humans (older than 18 months), great apes (except for gorillas), and bottlenose dolphins have all been observed to pass this test.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Consciousness”.

Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is a quantum field theory of electromagnetism. QED describes all phenomena involving electrically charged particles interacting by means of the electromagnetic force and has been called “the jewel of physics” for its extremely accurate predictions of quantities like the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, and the Lamb shift of the energy levels of hydrogen.

Physical interpretation of QED
It is a well-known classical fact that light takes the quickest path between two points, but how does light `know where it’s going’? That is, if you know the start and end points, you can figure out the path that will take the shortest time, but when light is emitted it doesn’t have a fixed end point, so how is it that it always takes the quickest path? The answer is provided by QED. Light doesn’t know where it is going, and it doesn’t always take the quickest path. In fact, according to QED, it takes EVERY possible path between the start and end points. Each path is assigned a probability (interestingly, this is a complex number-valued probability) and the actual path we observe is the weighted average of all of the paths. This average path is the one that the classical theory predicts, the quickest path between the two points. A very nice exposition from this point of view of QED is provided in Feynman’s classic: QED: The strange theory of light and matter (see below).

Physically, QED describes charged particles (and their antiparticles) interacting with each other by the exchange of photons. The magnitude of these interactions can be computed using perturbation theory; these rather complex formulas have a remarkable pictorial representation as Feynman diagrams [1]. QED was historically the theory to which Feynman diagrams were first applied. These diagrams had been invented from Lagrangian mechanics.

History
In 1900, Max Planck introduced the idea that energy is quantized, in order to derive a formula for the observed frequency dependence of the energy emitted by a black body. In 1905, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by postulating that light energy comes in quanta called photons. In 1913, Bohr explained the spectral lines of the hydrogen atom, again by using quantization. In 1924, Louis de Broglie put forward his theory of matter waves.

These theories, though successful, were strictly phenomenological: there was no rigorous justification for quantization. They are collectively known as the old quantum theory. The phrase “quantum physics” was first used in Johnston’s Planck’s Universe in Light of Modern Physics.

Modern quantum mechanics was born in 1925, when Heisenberg developed matrix mechanics and Schrödinger invented wave mechanics and the Schrödinger equation. Schrödinger subsequently showed that the two approaches were equivalent.

Heisenberg formulated his uncertainty principle in 1927, and the Copenhagen interpretation took shape at about the same time. Starting around 1927, Paul Dirac unified quantum mechanics with special relativity. He also pioneered the use of operator theory, including the influential bra-ket notation, as described in his famous 1930 textbook. During the same period, John von Neumann formulated the rigorous mathematical basis for quantum mechanics as the theory of linear operators on Hilbert spaces, as described in his likewise famous 1932 textbook. These, like many other works from the founding period still stand, and remain widely used.

The field of quantum chemistry was pioneered by Walter Heitler and Fritz London, who published a study of the covalent bond of the hydrogen molecule in 1927. Quantum chemistry was subsequently developed by a large number of workers, including the American chemist Linus Pauling.

Beginning in 1927, attempts were made to apply quantum mechanics to fields rather than single particles, resulting in what are known as quantum field theories. Early workers in this area included Dirac, Pauli, Weisskopf, and Jordan. This area of research culminated in the formulation of quantum electrodynamics by Feynman, Dyson, Schwinger, and Tomonaga during the 1940s. Quantum electrodynamics is a quantum theory of electrons, positrons, and the electromagnetic field, and served as a role model for subsequent quantum field theories.

The theory of quantum chromodynamics was formulated beginning in the early 1960s. The theory as we know it today was formulated by Politzer, Gross and Wilzcek in 1975. Building on pioneering work by Schwinger, Higgs, Goldstone and others, Glashow, Weinberg and Salam independently showed how the weak nuclear force and quantum electrodynamics could be merged into a single electroweak force.

QED was the first quantum field theory in which the difficulties of building a consistent, fully quantum description of fields and creation and annihilation of quantum particles were satisfactorily resolved. Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman received the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for its development, their contributions involving a covariant and gauge invariant prescription for the calculation of observable quantities. Feynman’s mathematical technique, based on his diagrams, initially seemed very different from the field-theoretic, operator-based approach of Schwinger and Tomonaga, but was later shown to be equivalent. The renormalization procedure for making sense of some of the infinite predictions of quantum field theory also found its first successful implementation in quantum electrodynamics

Being an observer of the non-linear (spiritual realm), I am aware of the fact that science, i.e. Quantum Mechanics has the capability of going to the very end of the linear realm. Scientists, in recent years, have finally come to the realization that reality can only be explained to the edge of the cliff, (so to speak) through science and mathematics, and beyond that we must enter that which one has no actual physical explanation. Having experienced the world of the non linear, I can attest to the fact that it is entirely experiential. Although there are wonderful studies and writings by many scientists in their respective fields regarding the world of non duality, as David Hawkins calls it, much of science is lacking the capacity to prove what humans have long been searching for…Proof that something lies beyond our physical reality. To bring science and the non linear together in one place would most likely take the rest of my life and add an unending list of references as well as objective and subjective studies to this website. I feel no obligation to prove what it is I already know, but for the sake of bringing the two together here, I will give these subjects my best attempt at explanations.

All of the information provided here, is reiterated through various reference materials. Please be aware that although articles from the Wiki Encyclopedia contain fact, they also reflect the opinions of the writers. See future articles on the subjects of linear, non linear, duality and non duality and the spiritual realms.
Myswizard

Quantum Mechanics
Quantum Mechanics is a theory in physics which primarily tries to explain the behaviour of extremely small bodies, such as atoms and molecules. Scientists generally agree that it is a very accurate and successful theory, and it has very important applications in today’s world as all electronic devices depend on Quantum Mechanics in some way. It is also important in understanding how large objects such as stars and even the whole Universe are the way they are.

Despite how successful Quantum Mechanics is, it does have some controversial elements. For example, the behaviour of microscopic objects is very different from our everyday experience, and some of its results appear to contradict other successful theories, such as the Theory of Relativity - simplified.

In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, expresses a limitation on accuracy of (nearly) simultaneous measurement of observables such as the position and the momentum of a particle. It furthermore precisely quantifies the imprecision by providing a lower bound (greater than zero) for the product of the standard deviations of the measurements. The uncertainty principle is one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics and was discovered by Werner Heisenberg in 1927.

It is sometimes called the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle (a title prefered by Niels Bohr),
Understanding uncertainty
Consider an experiment in which a particle is prepared in a definite state and two successive measurements are performed on the particle. The first one measures the particle’s position and the second immediately after measures its momentum. Each time the experiment is performed, some value x is obtained for position and some value p is obtained for momentum. These values, however, may be different for each trial. In other words, there is an uncertainty in the outcome of the measurements. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle provides a quantitative relationship between the uncertainties of p and x as measured by their standard deviations in the following way: If the particle state is such that the first measurement yields a dispersion of values Δx, then the second measurement will have a distribution of values whose dispersion Δp is at least inversely proportional to Δx.

Sound analogy
There is a precise, quantitative analogy between the Heisenberg uncertainty relations and properties of waves or signals. Consider a time-varying signal such as a sound wave. It is meaningless to ask about the frequency spectrum of the signal at a moment in time. In order to determine the frequencies accurately, the signal needs to be sampled for a finite (non zero) time. This necessarily means that time precision is lost. In other words, a sound cannot have both a precise time, as in a short pulse, and a precise frequency, as in a continuous pure tone. The time and frequency of a wave in time are analogous to the position and momentum of a particle in space.

Overview
An uncertainty relation arises between any two observable quantities that can be defined by non-commuting operators. The uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics is sometimes explained by claiming that the measurement of position necessarily disturbs a particle’s momentum. Heisenberg himself may have offered explanations which suggest this view, at least initially. That disturbance plays no role in the uncertainty principle can be seen as follows: Consider a particle prepared in a definite state, and measure either the momentum or the position of the particle, but not both. After repeating this experiment a large number of times, we will obtain probability distributions of values for both these quantities and the uncertainty relation still holds for the dispersions Δp, Δx of the values.

The Heisenberg uncertainty relations are a theoretical bound over all measurements. They hold for so-called ideal measurements, sometimes called von Neumann measurements. They hold even more so for non-ideal or Landau measurements.

Correspondingly, any one particle cannot be described simultaneously as a “classic point particle” and as a wave. The fact that either one of these descriptions is appropriate at least in separate cases is called wave-particle duality; a change of appropriate descriptions according to measured values is known as wavefunction collapse.) The uncertainty principle, as initially considered by Heisenberg, is concerned with cases in which neither of these two descri