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The Journal of near-death studies

Quantum misuse in psychic literature: A rejoinder.

Malozemoff, Jack A. Mroczkowski

Published Jan 1, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We provide a rejoinder to the responses of Chopra, Goswami, Kastrup, Radin, and van Lommel to our article "Quantum Misuse in Psychic Literature" that opens this journal issue. Our comments may be summarized in two main themes: These authors failed to recognize (a) how and why the von Neumann concept that only consciousness can collapse the quantum wavefunction has been largely rejected by physicists today and that quantum collapse is now understood to be able to occur without a conscious human observer, and (b) that their efforts to justify a universal consciousness on the basis of presently understood nonlocality are flawed. Also, in our view, from a quantum physics perspective the universe may be much less entangled and holistic than psi authors often assume. In conclusion, we contend that quantum misuse by psi authors remains a serious problem, undermining the credibility of psi research. We provide suggestions to help psi authors avoid this problem in the future.

DOI
10.17514/jnds-2019-37-3-p201-221

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We provide a rejoinder to the responses of Chopra, Goswami, Kastrup, Radin, and van Lommel to our article "Quantum Misuse in Psychic Literature" that opens this journal issue. Our comments may be summarized in two main themes: These authors failed to recognize (a) how and why the von Neumann concept that only consciousness can collapse the quantum wavefunction has been largely rejected by physicists today and that quantum collapse is now understood to be able to occur without a conscious human observer, and (b) that their efforts to justify a universal consciousness on the basis of presently understood nonlocality are flawed. Also, in our view, from a quantum physics perspective the universe may be much less entangled and holistic than psi authors often assume. In conclusion, we contend that quantum misuse by psi authors remains a serious problem, undermining the credibility of psi research. We provide suggestions to help psi authors avoid this problem in the future.
This invited article is a response to the paper "Quantum Misuse in Psychic Literature," by Jack A. Mroczkowski and Alexis P. Malozemoff, published in this issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Whereas I sympathize with Mroczkowski's and Malozemoff's cause and goals, and I recognize the problem that they attempted to tackle, I argue that their criticisms often overshot the mark and end up adding to the confusion. I address nince specific technical points that Mroczkowski and Malozemoff accused popular writers in the fields of health care and parapsychology of misunderstanding and misrepresenting. I argue that, by and large--and contrary to Mroczkowski's and Malozemoff's claims--the statements made by these writers are often reasonable and generally consistent with the current state of play in foundations of quantum mechanics.
A variant of the von Neumann-Wigner Interpretation is proposed. Problems arising from the quantum Zeno effect are addressed as we have described previously. We do, however, offer some new, and perhaps unexpected observations. We are accustomed to thinking of wave function collapse as occurring consequent to laboratory measurements. We speculate that, whatever physical correlate of consciousness exists within the brain, it is quantum mechanical in the sense that a brain, left to itself, would eventually decohere into a state no longer compatible with its conscious functioning. Wave function collapse returns it to a state compatible with consciousness. Indeed, this may be its important reason for occurring. A universe without it simply could not play host to conscious brains. The fact that it also prevents us from encountering "absurd" situations in the laboratory is merely a fortunate dividend. Whenever a quantum measurement is made the universe's future history splits into a number of possibilities. This number may be very large or infinite. And we believe consciousness plays a vital role in this happening. A "conscious" universe where quantum measurements are being made allows for an enormous number of equally acceptable world-histories. An "unconscious" one, always evolving in a unitary fashion, allows for only one. If we assume that the decision as to which worldhistory is the real one (i.e. this one) is made at random we see that the universe is overwhelmingly more likely to be "conscious" than not.
A variant of the von Neumann-Wigner Interpretation is proposed. Problems arising from the quantum Zeno effect are addressed as we have described previously. We do, however, offer some new, and perhaps unexpected observations. We are accustomed to thinking of wave function collapse as occurring consequent to laboratory measurements. We speculate that, whatever physical correlate of consciousness exists within the brain, it is quantum mechanical in the sense that a brain, left to itself, would eventually decohere into a state no longer compatible with its conscious functioning. Wave function collapse returns it to a state compatible with consciousness. Indeed, this may be its important reason for occurring. A universe without it simply could not play host to conscious brains. The fact that it also prevents us from encountering "absurd" situations in the laboratory is merely a fortunate dividend. Whenever a quantum measurement is made the universe's future history splits into a number of possibilities. This number may be very large or infinite. And we believe consciousness plays a vital role in this happening. A "conscious" universe where quantum measurements are being made allows for an enormous number of equally acceptable world-histories. An "unconscious" one, always evolving in a unitary fashion, allows for only one. If we assume that the decision as to which worldhistory is the real one (i.e. this one) is made at random we see that the universe is overwhelmingly more likely to be "conscious" than not.
The double-slit interference experiment has long been widely misinterpreted as "human consciousness directly causing wavefunction collapse". This view confuses physical measurement interaction with subjective conscious experience and deviates from the orthodox interpretation of modern quantum mechanics. Starting from the double-slit experiment, this paper distinguishes the real physical mechanism of wavefunction collapse and points out that the disappearance of interference fringes originates from the physical coupling between measuring devices and microscopic particles as well as environmental decoherence, which has no direct causal relationship with conscious observation. On this basis, this paper proposes a self-consistent unified framework of consciousness and quantum universe: consciousness is not the trigger of collapse, but the ontological source of the entire quantum possibility universe. Through the Yang-Mills mass gap and symmetry breaking mechanism, consciousness condenses the potential quantum field into a material universe with mass, structure and stable dynamics. The biological brain acts as a localized carrier of consciousness, enabling the overall consciousness to observe and experience its own creation from a limited perspective, forming a closed loop of "consciousness creation—self-observation—self-cognition". This paper corrects systematic biases in popular science and public perception, and provides a rigorous and unified path for understanding the real role of consciousness in the quantum universe.
The validity of the assertion that some recent double-slit interference experiments, conducted by Radin et al., would have tested the possible role of the experimenter's mind in the collapse of the quantum wave function, is questioned. It is emphasized that quantum mechanics doesn't need any psychophysical ingredient to explain the measurement processes, and therefore parapsychologists shouldn't resort to the latter to support the possibility of psychokinesis, but search for more convincing explanations.
This research has as its theme the idealistic monistic philosophy of Amit Goswami that postulates Quantum Consciousness as a unifying principle and mediator of all reality in its manifold, manifested or potential. It is intended to answer the question about the possibility of a quantum ethics from the thought of Amit Goswami. For that, the epistemological relationship between "quantum creativity and quantum ethics" is presented; then "responsibility and quantum ethics"; without neglecting the "universal criteria of a quantum ethics"; finally, the relation between "quantum ethics and purpose". This research is justified by the fact that quantum physics is the theoretical basis for many technological inventions, and there are still not many philosophical studies that demonstrate the ethical implications of this technically successful science. The methodology used was a critical analysis of the main works of Amit Goswami, with O Universo Autoconsciente (2003) being the main source for offering the basic theoretical elements for understanding the researched topic, since in other works the author explores the fundamental concepts presented in it. It is hoped to show that by expanding a person's awareness, he can make choices with originality from a inviolate level, which is the quantum consciousness, becoming creative and responsible; the process of discovering self-consciousness as a self-referential unfolding of Consciousness, if applied to education, has a direct impact on the relationships between people, since they can be discovered as co-creators of reality because they perceive themselves as conscious observers with self-reference, Creativity can transform the world as they transform.