In this paper I address some philosophical questions regarding the impact quantum \nmechanics has in the classical conceptions about reality and knowledge. I stress that \nonto-gnosiological realism still is an option to the issues regarding the relationship \nbetween knowledge and reality. Rejecting some radical aspects of Copenhagen \ninterpretation of quantum formalism, I emphasize the advantages of de Broglie’s \nrealistic and causal model. To finish with, I discuss the limits of the Cartesian concept \nof matter and the split between matter and mind.
In this paper I address some philosophical questions regarding the impact quantum \nmechanics has in the classical conceptions about reality and knowledge. I stress that \nonto-gnosiological realism still is an option to the issues regarding the relationship \nbetween knowledge and reality. Rejecting some radical aspects of Copenhagen \ninterpretation of quantum formalism, I emphasize the advantages of de Broglie’s \nrealistic and causal model. To finish with, I discuss the limits of the Cartesian concept \nof matter and the split between matter and mind.
The upheavals related to the quantic revolution have, among other effects, led to the consecration, in the community of physicists itself, of a profound partition as far as fundamental questions of the nature of reality and of the role of physics are concerned. In fact, while the quantum theory, experimentally speaking, can be perfectly trusted and allows correct predictions, the conception of nature which it proposes has raised a deep misunderstanding which, up to date, has not yet found a solution. This reflection examines and tries to understand the nature of such a conflict, since it looks curious that it creates an opposition among the physicists on the issue of quantum properties which are obviously strange, but which are also “scientifically” established, as the non-locality, and the technological fertility the evidences of which are getting numerous. It show that behind what can appear to be a useless controversy in regard to a theory and to established experimental “truths”, we find in fact the confrontation of two philosophical conceptions of the reality: “realism” and “phenomenism”. This confrontation suggest especially is that it is an illusion to defend a quantic theory as being philosophically speaking neutral; the question related to the nature of microphysical particles, and of reality in general, also bear a philosophical dimension, or even a metaphysical dimension to be more precise. In regard to this reason, responses which are just experimental or quantitative are not enough to answer these questions.
Scientific realism holds that the objects of scientific knowledge exist independently of the minds or activities of scientists and those scientific theories are true of that objective world. This is antithetical to the posits of quantum physics, a body of knowledge taken as the seal of the sciences because of its incredible feat, which emphasizes observer created reality, and to that end subjective and probabilistic understanding of realities. Given this background, we contend that, if the thesis of scientific realism were to be taken as sacrosanct, nature would have remained somewhat unfavourable since nobody would have dared to ‘create’ reality other than those originally imposed by nature. And to the quantum physicist, the resort to probabilistic conception of reality is an obvious indication that nature in its dynamism is uncanny and still has billions of tricks for mankind.
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may validly contribute to the basic philosophical quest. Contrary to philosophy of science, which is a subject for philosophers, philosophy in science calls on the services of physicists. When, in its spirit, quantum theory and Bell's theorem are used as touchstones, the two main traditional philosophical approaches, realism and idealism, are found wanting. A more suitable conception seems to be an intermediate one, in which the mere postulated existence of a holistic and hardly knowable Mind-Independent Reality is found to have an explaining power. Some corrections to comments by Schins of a previous work on the same subject are incorporated.
Since Descartes' dualism, with his res extensa and res cogitans, six fundamental problems in the philosophy and natural history of mind are these: 1. how does mind act on matter? 2. If mind does not act on matter is mind a mere epiphenomenon? 3. What might be the source of free will? 4. What might be the source of a responsible free will? 5. Why might it have been selectively advantageous to evolve consciousness? 6. What is consciousness? I approach the first five of the above six problems based on two physical postulates. First the mind-brain system is a quantum coherent, but reversibly decohering and recohering system. This allows me to answer 1) above, mind does not act causally on brain at all, rather it acausally decohers to classicity (for all practical purposes), hence has consequences for brain and body as matter. Epiphenomenalism is averted. A quantum mind, because it is acausal on Copenhagen including Born, yields a free will, but a merely random free will, not a responsible free will. Second, the most radical part of this article proposes that the quantum classical interface is not always describable by a law: specifically in a special relativity setting, no function, F, maps the present state of the system mind-brain into its future. In its place is a nonrandom yet lawless process. I seek in this non-random yet lawless process a source for a responsible free will. Finally, if the quantum-classical boundary can be non-random yet lawless, then no algorithmic simulation of the world or ourselves can calculate the real world, hence the evolutionary selective advantages for evolving consciousness to know it may be great. I make no progress on problem 6, the hard problem of qualia.
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.
Is mind quantum-like? Is consciousness quantum physical? Does consciousness have a role to play in the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum universe? Or is this dichotomy between classical and quantum an illusion? How can world philosophies enrich our views on these matters and interact with the best scientific theories? These are some questions that motivated us to conceive the current book. We also felt an urgent need to discuss the central philosophical questions haunting the emerging frameworks of quantum cognition and quantum-like framework (QLF). We have observed that there are very good technical or mathematical works being done in the emerging fields of quantum cognition and QLF, but there is still a great need for exploring the underlying and open philosophical questions they demand. Quantum cognition developed as a frontier research programme in understanding various cognitive phenomena that are hard or impossible to describe based on classical cognitive science paradigm. Classical cognitive science draws philosophically and mathematically from classical physics and classical probability theory. For example, cognitive realism thinking is deeply motivated by the scientific realism of classical physics. However, as we explore, there are numerous empirical findings which demonstrate clearly that human mind and cognitive processes exhibit features that are more quantum-like. Central to these features are indeterminacy, context dependence, and complementarity of cognitive phenomena, for example, perception, information retrieval, and even qualia. Many good works in the previous decade have demonstrated the efficacy of quantum-like mathematical modelling in such cases. However, given that efficacy, we cannot simply conclude that mind is quantum. Rather there are features that go beyond what is allowed in standard quantum formalism.