In this paper it is claimed that Bohm’s holistic, realistic, causally deterministic, non-local theory of the relationship of mind and matter which is based on the key notion of “active information” suffers from an ill inductive reasoning. It is shown that the notion is a special case of the notion of pragmatic information as posed by Roederer which applies merely to natural living systems and artifacts (unnatural nonliving systems). So, the extension of the thesis of active information to the natural nonliving world would count as a violation of the key constituent concepts of pragmatic information and as an ill generalization of Bohm’s thesis itself. Active information as ‘mind’ will be found in biological systems and in some artifacts which represent the biological mind. There is no reason to think of inanimate nature being driven by information. This, in turn, would lead to the substitution of empirical realism for realism which will modify Bohm’s ideas to come even closer to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
NeuroQuantology | June 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 2 | Page 150-163
In this paper it is claimed that Bohm’s holistic, realistic, causally deterministic, non-local theory of the relationship of mind and matter which is based on the key notion of “active information” suffers from an ill inductive reasoning. It is shown that the notion is a special case of the notion of pragmatic information as posed by Roederer which applies merely to natural living systems and artifacts (unnatural nonliving systems). So, the extension of the thesis of active information to the natural nonliving world would count as a violation of the key constituent concepts of pragmatic information and as an ill generalization of Bohm’s thesis itself. Active information as ‘mind’ will be found in biological systems and in some artifacts which represent the biological mind. There is no reason to think of inanimate nature being driven by information. This, in turn, would lead to the substitution of empirical realism for realism which will modify Bohm’s ideas to come even closer to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
In this paper I give a new information-theoretic analysis of the formalisms and interpretations of quantum mechanics (QM) in general, and of two mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics in particular: The Copenhagen interpretation and David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. Adopting Juan G. Roederer’s reading of the notion of pragmatic information, I argue that pragmatic information is not applicable to the Copenhagen interpretation since the interpretation is primarily concerned with epistemology rather than ontology. However it perfectly fits Bohm’s ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics in the realms of biotic and artificial systems. Viewing Bohm’s interpretation of QM in the context of pragmatic information imposes serious limitations to the qualitative aspect of such an interpretation, making his extension of the notion active information to every level of reality illegitimate. Such limitations lead to the idea that, contrary to Bohm’s claim, mind is not a more subtle aspect of reality via the quantum potential as active information, but the quantum potential as it affects particles in the double-slit experiment represents the non-algorithmic aspect of the mind as a genuine information processing system. This will provide an information-based ground, firstly, for refreshing our views on quantum interpretations and secondly, for a novel qualitative theory of the relationship of mind and matter in which mind-like properties are exclusive attributes of living systems. To this end, I will also take an information-theoretic approach to the notion of intentionality as interpreted by John Searle.
This study offers a comprehensive analysis of David Bohm’s article “A New Theory of the Relationship of Mind and Matter” (Philosophical Psychology, 1990) — one of the most original attempts of the twentieth century to overcome Cartesian dualism on a physical foundation. The paper proceeds in sequence through the historical context of the mind–body problem, the physical basis of the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, the central concept of active information, and the implicate order. Bohm’s framework is then compared with several major contemporary approaches: Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Hameroff & Penrose, 2014), the holographic brain model (Pribram, 1991), Integrated Information Theory (Tononi, 2004), and the Global Workspace model (Baars, 1988; Dehaene, 2014). A dedicated section examines the relationship between Bohm’s ideas and Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (Rovelli, 1996), as well as Loop Quantum Gravity (Rovelli, 2004; Rovelli & Smolin, 1995), and Qbism, developed by Christopher Fuchs, Rüdiger Schack, and Carlton Caves (Fuchs, 2002; Fuchs et al., 2014). The concluding section evaluates the compatibility of Bohm’s ideas with quantum field theory and modern quantum information science. The principal conclusion is that Bohm’s 1990 article does not constitute a complete theory of consciousness, yet it anticipates with remarkable prescience the information-ontological tendencies of the twenty-first century and may best be understood as a philosophical-physical metatheory whose relevance has only grown since its publication.
The relationship of mind and matter is approached in a new way in this article. This approach is based on the causal interpretation of the quantum theory, in which an electron, for example, is regarded as an inseparable union of a particle and afield. This field has, however, some new properties that can be seen to be the main sources of the differences between the quantum theory and the classical (Newtonian) theory. These new properties suggest that the field may be regarded as containing objective and active information, and that the activity of this information is similar in certain key ways to the activity of information in our ordinary subjective experience. The analogy between mind and matter is thus fairly close. This analogy leads to the proposal of the general outlines of a new theory of mind, matter, and their relationship, in which the basic notion is participation rather than interaction. Although the theory can be developed mathematically in more detail, the main emphasis here is to show qualitatively how it provides a way of thinking that does not divide mind from matter, and thus leads to a more coherent understanding of such questions than is possible in the common dualistic and reductionistic approaches. These ideas may be relevant to connectionist theories and might perhaps suggest new directions for their development.
Abstract The paper proposes that quantum theory implies a radically new notion of matter which has not been properly understood before David Bohm’s groundbreaking work. Bohm proposed that the fundamental particles of physics (such as electrons) are not merely pushed around mechanically by classical forces but are also able to respond to information. Information is thus assumed to be an objective commodity which can exist independently of the human mind and which actively guides or instructs physical processes. This notion of active information also applies in computational, biological and psychological phenomena, thus helping us to understand how the mental and the physical sides of reality are related. It may even help us to understand the nature of conscious experience. The latter part of the paper considers the deeper mathematical and physical background of quantum theory and suggests that we need to revise our basic assumptions about quantum objects, such as the role of the wave function.
An objective definition of pragmatic information and the consideration of recent results about information processing in the human brain can help overcome some traditional difficulties with the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Rather than attempting to define information ab initio, I introduce the concept of interaction between material bodies as a primary concept. Two distinct categories can be identified: 1) Interactions which can always be reduced to a superposition of physical interactions (forces) between elementary constituents; 2) Interactions between complex bodies which cannot be reduced to a superposition of interactions between parts, and in which patterns and forms (in space and/or time) play the determining role. Pragmatic information is then defined as the correspondence between a given pattern and the ensuing pattern-specific change. I will show that pragmatic information is a biological concept that plays no active role in the purely physical domain; it only does so when a living organism intervenes. The consequences for the foundations of both classical and quantum physics are important and will be discussed in detail. Since by its very definition pragmatic information (the one our brain uses to represent, think about and react to the outside world)cannot operate in the quantum domain, it is advisable to refrain from using it in our mental representation of what is happening 'inside' a quantum system. Although the theoretical framework developed for quantum mechanics handles mathematical entities specifically attributed to a quantum system, the only truly pragmatic information it can provide relates to macroscopic effects on the environment (natural, or artificial as in a measurement instrument) with which the system interacts.
There are several important philosophical problems to which quantum mechanics is often said to have made significant contributions: Determinism: quantum theory has been taken to refute determinism;Free Will: in turn, this is thought to open the door to free will;The mind-body problem: relatedly, it is sometimes said to shed light on consciousness;Idealism: more radically, quantum theory is assumed to have refuted realism and to have placed the observer at the centre of the world;Reductionism: even granting realism, it has been claimed that quantum theory undermines reductionism.Our main thesis in this paper is that none of this is either necessary or desirable. By adopting the de Broglie–Bohm theory (or Bohmian mechanics), one can straightforwardly account for quantum phenomena without endorsing any of these claims.