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Some Lessons of Quantum Mechanics for Cognitive Sciences

Gennaro Auletta

Published Jan 1, 2003• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The quantum-mechanical measurement problem is briefly discussed and the philosophical lessons are drawn. In 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.

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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.

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De Gruyter eBooks•Aug 6, 2014•2 citations
The quantum-mechanical measurement problem is briefly discussed and the philosophical lessons are drawn. In 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.
In recent decades, progress in the field of neurosciences has triggered an interest in understanding mind-brain relationships. Quantum Mechanics (QM) has been present in the debate from its beginnings through the well-known measurement paradox. The standard interpretation of QM considers two basic, fundamentally irreducible, processes: the deterministic evolution of the wave-function according to the Schrodinger equation, once the initial conditions have been settled; and the indeterministic wave-function collapse into one of the possible outcomes, after performing a specific measurement. So, QM would point to the limits of a purely deterministic view of nature and, in particular, of brains. Nevertheless, QM’s relevance for the brain’s physics is still to be proven. Detractors of the QM influence are confident of the role of decoherent processes at different physical scales in order to ensure a classical deterministic behavior of the brain. However, little attention is paid to the epistemic implications of invoking decoherence for the mind-brain problem. In this paper, (i) we present lasting QM models stating a specific view of human consciousness and make explicit their position regarding the relationship between the physical activity of neurons and/or networks of neurons and the phenomenal conscious experience; (ii) we review the main criticisms of the relevance of QM in the brain and, most importantly, we bring out the philosophical implications behind the usual recourse to decoherence in the transition from the quantum to the classical world, explaining why the mind-brain problem and the measurement paradox should not be disentangled.
Abstract There is something fundamentally disturbing about contemporary philosophy of mind and philosophical cognitive science. Almost without exception (exceptions such as Lockwood (1989) and Chalmers (1996, see esp. p. 349) ), the philosophical theories are logically inconsistent with the most well-confirmed theory ever developed by humans, namely, quantum mechanics. Why do philosophers develop theories of the mind-brain as if quantum mechanics does not exist, or as if it is utterly irrelevant to theories of the mind-brain? I believe this epistemic situation has arisen due to a series of questionable philosophical arguments about the role of philosophy of mind/cognitive science and quantum mechanics in our overall theoretical framework. In sect. I explain some of these arguments and contend they are unsound.
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