Whitehead, James, and Quantum Physics

1
Whitehead, James, and Quantum Physics

• Whiteheads Process Ontology as a Framework for a
  Heisenberg/James/von Neumann Conception of Nature
  and of Human Nature

2
Incorporating consciousness into physics.

• Whiteheads Process Conception of Nature allows
  consciousness to be injected into physical
  theory.
• My plan is to (1), identify the key elements of
  Whiteheads ontology (2), put them coherently
  together (3), do the same for quantum theory
  (4) amalgamate the two conceptions into a single
  theory that is better defined than either one
  alone and finally (5), to give a simple but
  important application.
• Ambiguities in either theory alone are resolved
  by requiring the two theories to reduce
  coherently to one.

3
Whiteheads First Principle The World is Built
Out Of Actual Entities!

• Actual entities---also termed actual
  occasions, are the final real things of which
  the world is made. (PR, p.18)
• The final facts are, all alike, actual entities,
  and these actual entities are drops of
  experience, complex and interdependent. (p.18)

4
Whitehead accepts Jamess claim about the
droplike (atomic/indivisible) character of
experience

• Either your experience is of no content, of no
  change, or it is of a perceptible amount of
  content or change. Your acquaintance with reality
  grows literally by buds or drops of perception.
  Intellectually and on reflection you can divide
  them into components, but as immediately given
  they come totally or not at all. (Wm. James,
  PoP,Vol 1, p. 68)

5
Thought is Itself the Thinker

• If the passing thought be the directly verifiable
  existent, which no school has hitherto doubted it
  to be, then that thought is itself the thinker,
  and psychology need not look beyond. (PoP,Vol 1,
  p.401)
• Thus the actual entities are the drops of
  experience themselves, not the conscious
  thinkers that know them,
• Your awareness of your self must be an aspect
  of your thoughts there is no need for,
  additionally, a persisting conscious self
  standing behind your thoughts.
• Your stream of consciousness consists of ideas
  clinging together---whence do they get their
  fantastic laws of clinging? (Vol 1, p.3)

6
A Basic Whiteheadian Distinction Continuous
Potentialities versus Atomic Actualities

• continuity concerns what is potential,
• whereas
• actuality is incurably atomic.
• (PR, p.61)

7
Actual Entities Decide Things

• Actual entities make real what was
  antecedently merely potential. (p.72)
• every decision is referred to one or more actual
  entitiesActuality is decision amid
  potentiality. (p. 43).
• Actual entities are the only reasons. (p.24)

8
Each (Temporal) Actual Entity is associated
with a Region of Space.

• every actual entity in the temporal world is to
  be credited with a spatial volume for its
  perspective standpoint... (p.68)

9
The Atomization of Space-Time

• The actual entities atomize the extensive
  continuum. This space-time continuum is in
  itself merely potentiality for division. p.67
• The contemporary world is in fact divided and
  atomic, being a multiplicity of definite actual
  entities. These contemporary actual entities are
  divided from each other, and are not themselves
  divisible into other contemporary actual
  entities p. 62

10
Growing Actuality Is Created in a Growing Actual
Space-Time

• Whiteheads actuality consists of a growing
  sequence of actual entities.
• The basic process of nature creates an atomized
  actual space-time from a prior continuous
  potential space-time.
• Natures process assigns a separate space-time
  region to each actual entity.
• Natures process fills up, step-by-step, the
  space-time region lying in the past of the
  advancing sequence of space-like surface now.

11
Time
Open Future
Open Future
Fixed Past
12
Receptacle versus Relational Conception of
Space-Time

• Newtons receptacle space and time exists even
  if nothing is in it.
• Leibnizs relational view. Space-time pertains to
  relations among actually existing entities Empty
  space is a nonsensical idea.
• Whitehead Atomized actual space-time is occupied
  by actual atomic (indivisible) entities, and is
  created out of continuous potentiality for
  space-time

13
Contrast with the Growing Past in
Non-Relativistic Physics

• In non-relativistic physics the growing past
  lies behind an advancing (into the future)
  sequence of constant-time instants now.

14
Non-Relativistic Instants Now

• Time

Open Future
Open Future
n3
n2
n1
n
Fixed Past
15
From Von Neumann NRQT to Tomonaga-Schwinger RQFT.

• The NR quantum state ?(t)??(s)
• t specifies a continuous three-dimensional
  surface in the four-dimensional space-time
  continuum, with all spatial points lying at the
  same time t.
• s specifies a continuous three-dimensional
  surface in the four-dimensional space-time
  continuum, with every point on the surface
  spacelike-like separated from every other point.

16
Time
Open Future
Open Future
Fixed Past
17
Objective Potentia and Subjective Knowledge
in Quantum Theory

• Heisenberg The probability function combines
  objective and subjective elements. It contains
  statements about possibilities or better
  tendencies (potentia in Aristotelian
  philosophy) and these are completely
  objective,and it contains statements about our
  knowledge of the system, which of course are
  subjective in so far as they may be different for
  different observers. (PP,p.53)

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Transition from Potentiality to Actuality in
Quantum Mechanics

• Heisenberg the transition from the possible
  to the actual takes place during the act of
  observation.
• Heisenberg The observation itself changes the
  probability function discontinuously it selects
  of all possible events the actual one that has
  taken place. Since through the observation our
  knowledge of the system has changed
  discontinuously, its mathematical representation
  has also undergone the discontinuous change and
  we may speak of a quantum jump (PP, p.54)

19
Time
Open Future
Open Future
Fixed Past
20
Compatible with Einsteins (Special) Theory of
Relativity

• All predictions are independent of the sequential
  ordering of space-like separated events.
• No signal (controlled message) can be
  transmitted faster than the velocity of light.

21
Psycho-Physical Building Blocks

• In this Whiteheadian ontologicalization of
  quantum theory, each quantum reduction event is
  identified with a Whiteheadian actual
  entity/occasion!
• Each Whiteheadian actual occasion/entity has a
  mental pole and a physical pole.
• Each Heisenberg quantum reduction event specifies
  an increment in (experienced) knowledge, and an
  associated reduction of the physical state of the
  universe to one compatible with the new state of
  knowledge.

22
Basic Ontology A Summary

• Objective/absolute actuality consist of a
  sequence of psycho-physical quantum reduction
  events, identified as Whiteheadian actual
  entities/occasions.
• These happenings combine to form/create a growing
  past of fixed and settled facts.
• Each fact is associated with (1), a fixed
  space-time region (2), the actualization of some
  subset of the potentialities created by the set
  of prior events (3), a drop of experience that
  constitutes new knowledge and (4), the
  eradication of all of the potentialities that
  conflict with the new knowledge.

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Continuity and Causation in Classical Physics

• Classical physics postulates a continuous process
  satisfying causal closure of the physical the
  physical description, by itself, provides for a
  causally complete deterministic account. No
  effects of mind or consciousness on the
  physically described properties need be
  introduced or acknowledged.
• Thus, according to the classical
  conceptualization, Mind/Consciousness is
  redundant or epiphenomenal it adds no causal
  input to the already complete causal structure.

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But Orthodox Quantum Theory has Two Causal Gaps.

• The determinations of two kinds of
  under-determined decisions are needed to make
  quantum theory work!
• Free choices by conscious agents. Basically,
  these are choices to act in a particular way with
  an intent to elicit a specific conceived
  experiential feedback.
• These choices made by agents are not determined
  within orthodox theory---either statistically or
  otherwise.
• But the intended feedback/outcome may or may not
  actually occur.
• The quantum state of the universe just prior to
  the agents choice determines the probability for
  the intended feedback to occur. It does not
  determine whether---or not---that feedback will
  occur.

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Filling the Causal Gap.

• Orthodox Quantum Theory does not determine what
  we decide to do.
• These choices of actions are, within that theory,
  free choices.
• The Whitehead Quantum ontology provides a
  rational conceptual framework for approaching
  this basic issue that contemporary quantum theory
  leaves unresolved How are our choices about how
  we will act generated and how are they
  implemented ?

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Significance

• The mainstream neuroscience materialist
  assumption is that any effect of mind is
  causally reducible to the physically describable
  aspects of nature.
• This presumption neither demanded nor supported
  by orthodox physical theory
• Mind can in principle enter fundamentally into
  brain dynamics in an essential and non-eliminable
  way.

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Whiteheadian Process

• The many become one, and are increased by one.
  (PR p.21)
• The past actualities combine to determine a new
  space-time standpoint (region) from which the
  potentialities created by the past actualities
  will be prehended (grasped).
• The von Neumann/Tomonaga/Schwinger quantum state
  restricted to that region represents the
  physically describable potentialities available
  to the associated entity.
• But the effects of the mental poles of past
  occasions can also intrude into the process.

28
Actual Occasions of the First Kind

• An Actual Occasion of the first kind chooses an
  intended action it initiates an action that will
  tend to produce an intended experiential
  feedback.
• It actualizes its neural correlate, which is a
  template for action a macroscopic pattern of
  physical (neurological) activity which, if
  sustained for a sufficiently long time, will tend
  to cause the intended feedback to occur.
• Synchronous macroscopic gamma-band activity is
  the prime candidate for a template for action.

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Actual Occasions of the Second Kind

• An Actual Occasion of the second kind specifies
  which one of the mutually exclusive alternative
  possible feedbacks actually occurs.
• Occasions of the first and second kind have been
  called, respectively, choices on the part of the
  experimenter and choices on the part of nature
  (Bohr, !958, p.51)

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Simplest Application

• Suppose the idea I shall now raise my arm
  occurs, and this experience is colored by a
  strong feeling of the positive value of that
  contemplated action.
• Suppose this experience tends to produce a
  successor in which the core idea I shall now
  raise my arm is colored with a feeling of
  effort to raise now my arm

31
Simplest Application Continued

• Suppose that experience causes, by virtue of the
  fantastic laws of clinging an immediate
  (within a few milliseconds) repetition of that
  experience, and that this causes another
  immediate repetition, and so on.
• This rapid sequence of actualizations of the
  associated template for action will tend---by
  virtue of the so-called quantum Zeno effect---to
  hold that template for action in place for longer
  than would otherwise be the case.

32
Simplest Application Continued

• This persisting excitation of the template for
  action will tend to cause your arm to rise.
• Every cause connection used here is strictly
  compatible with the orthodox laws of physics a
  certain causal gap in that theory has merely been
  filled in a particular way.
• The quantum Zeno effect is itself a decoherence
  effect, and it is not diminished by environmental
  decoherence.
• Thus a simple physical effect of a conscious
  intent and effort is explained within a causal
  framework that amalgamates orthodox quantum
  theory and Whiteheadian process.

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Benefits

• Actual scientific practice has three components
  (1), our freedom to act upon the world in ways of
  our choosing (2), the experienced feedbacks from
  these actions and (3) a mathematical framework
  used to explain the connections between the first
  two.
• The proposed ontology treats the three components
  as bona fide aspects of a psycho-physical whole,
  rather than trying to force the theory into an
  essentially classical-physics-type
  consciousness-free mold.

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Benefits Continued

• In dealing with empirically occurring
  correlations between our choices of how we will
  act and the experienced consequences of these
  acts, it is difficult and awkward to use a theory
  that denies the freedom of these choices, and
  that cannot explain the occurrence of any
  experience of any kind.
• Contemporary physical theory is not unnaturally
  constrained in the way that classical physical
  theory was, and it hobbles the development of
  science to shackle it in the old ways.