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Intellectica Revue de l Association pour la Recherche Cognitive

4.2. Some Lessons of Quantum Mechanics for Cognitive Science : Intentionality and Representation

Gennaro Auletta

Published Jan 1, 2003• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The quantum-mechanical measurement problem is briefly discussed and the philosophical lessons are drawn, hi particular, the relevant role of dynamics is pointed out and this is presented as a trade-off between determination and correlation. Then it is shown that also the mind should be understood as a dynamical relationship between active reference and representation. A new understanding of intentionality is finally proposed.

DOI
10.3406/intel.2003.1692

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The quantum-mechanical measurement problem is briefly discussed and the philosophical lessons are drawn, hi particular, the relevant role of dynamics is pointed out and this is presented as a trade-off between determination and correlation. Then it is shown that also the mind should be understood as a dynamical relationship between active reference and representation. A new understanding of intentionality is finally proposed.
It is widely accepted that consciousness at the start of the 20th century was considered mainly in the context of neurology and the mind-body problem belonged to the domain of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, later broadened by behavioural science and cognitive science. However, these disciplines cannot completely explain the correlation between mental activity and matter. \nChapter one starts by defining the difficulty of determining consciousness. A discussion of how philosophers (such as Descartes, Locke, Dennett and Nagel) attempted to describe this phenomenon leads to the conclusion that firstly, consciousness is indefinable and secondly, it continues to be a challenge for both – philosophy and science – to explain how subjective consciousness fits into the objective world. The following two parts of the chapter focus on the major philosophical theories of the mind-body problem. \nIn chapter two there is a focus on the mutual relation between philosophy and science, physics in particular. However, this project deals more with the implications of science for the philosophy of mind and mind-body problem than the science itself. The second enquiry of this chapter is to point out the difference in philosophical and scientific understanding of the word ‘substance’ (crucial to the mind-body problem). \nChapter three considers quantum theory, since the relation between mind and body started to be tackled from the completely new point of view, after the philosophers began to assimilate the implications of quantum physics. Firstly, there is a short introduction to quantum theory and the most significant points for philosophy and quantum mechanics issues are provided (such as quantum superposition, the measurement problem or the backward causation). Analysis of three prevailing theories is provided. \nThis project addresses the contribution of quantum mechanics to the studies of consciousness and matter and examines whether it helps in solving the mind-body problem.
Two mysteries -loosely connected?The Authors who have suggested a deep connection between the solution of the mind-body problem and the understanding of quantum mechanics are too numerous to list.But what exactly would be the alleged structural fit between these two deeply puzzling theoretical issues?Can a genuine philosophical issue -which by its very nature is conceptual in nature -ultimately be resolved by advances in the empirical sciences?The connection is all too often asserted to lie in the subjects confounding natures, but the mere fact that two problems are of equal impenetrability to the human mind does not imply that there is a profound interdependence between the two.There is however an obvious way in which quantum mechanics might have a bearing on the philosophical mind-body problem: if quantum mechanics implies that for some physical events there is no physical cause, then at least the very strong variants of the so-called "principle of causal closure" of the physical realm lose much of their corroborative underpinning in physics as practiced by real physicists as such, and are thus constrained to the speculative physicalism advanced by metaphysicians.However, unless one assumes a strong version of the principle of sufficient reason, which would exclude chance events in principle, even events supposedly not caused by some physical cause are not immediately thereby caused by some nonphysical cause.Moreover the fact is that not all of the interpretations of quantum mechanics imply indeterministic 'choices' of events: neither the many-worlds interpretation nor a Bohmian hidden variable interpretation assume indeterminism.Even in the most obvious theoretical nexus
The main theme of this book is the idea that quantum mechanics is valid not only for microscopic objects but also for the macroscopic apparatus used for quantum mechanical measurements. The author demonstrates the intimate relations that exist between quantum mechanics and its interpretation which are induced by the quantum mechanical measurement process. Consequently, the book is concerned both with the philosophical, metatheoretical problems of interpretations and with the more formal problems of quantum object theory. The consequences of this approach turn out to be partly very promising and partly rather disappointing. On the one hand, it is possible to give a rigorous justification of some important parts of interpretation, such as probability, by means of object theory. On the other hand, the problem of the objectification of measurement results leads to inconsistencies which cannot be resolved in an obvious way. This open problem has far-reaching consequences for the possibility of recognising an objective reality in physics.