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Epilogue

Sunny Y. Auyang

Published Jul 27, 1995• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The relation between knowledge and object, concept and experience, we and the world, is a central problem in philosophy and fascinates many people besides philosophers. The mind-body relation shows up in quantum interpretations, mainly through the writings of physicists. In many interpretations, the mind is conceived of as an observer that is peculiar for being beyond the laws of physics. They echo the philosophies in which the mind is an exotic object that is somehow affected by plain objects. These interpretations have been undermined by the research in the quantum measurement problem. We can find causal relations among objects, but these objects do not answer to the definitive qualities of observers; such qualities are outlawed in quantum theories.

DOI
10.1093/oso/9780195093445.003.0008

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It is possible that discussion of the perennial mind-body problem has been vitiated by a misunderstanding, not of the philosophy or psychology involved, but of the physics? Michael Lockwood thinks so. 'In the preface to mind, Brain and the Quantum he writes' 'In reflecting on the relation of consciousness to the matter of the brain, philosophers have been apt to take matter for granted, assuming that it is mind rather than matter that is philosophicallly problematic.' However,(p178) 'quantum mechanics is not to be regarded as just another scientific theory... it demands a complete revolution in our way of looking at the world.' His thesis, then, is that a proper re-orientation of our view of the physical world in the light of quantum mechanics (or, more precisely, of his preferred view of the interpretation of the quantum formalism) will go at least a long way towards resolving the problem of the nature of 'mental' phenomena and processes.
Quantum theory underpins much of modern physics and its implications draw the attention of industry, academia and public funding agencies. However there are many unsettled conceptual and philosophical problems in the interpretation of quantum mechanics which are a matter of extensive debate. These hotly debated topics include the meaning of the wave function, the nature of the quantum objects, the role of the observer, the non-locality of the quantum world, and the emergence of classicality from the quantum domain. Containing chapters written by eminent researchers from the fields of physics and philosophy, this book provides interdisciplinary, comprehensive and up-to-date perspectives of the problems related to the interpretation of quantum theory. It is ideal for academic researchers in physics and philosophy working on the ontology of quantum mechanics.
Abstract Physics has a somewhat uneasy relationship to the mind. On the one hand, minds are part of the natural universe and although much of physics is concerned with the non-minded parts of reality, recently a set of problems has emerged in physics that has placed a special focus on observers. In quantum mechanics, the contrast between what the deterministic dynamics yields and what the observer sees is at the forefront of the theory’s difficulties. In the controversies surrounding time, questions about whether the relativistic image of time can account for the subjective experience of passage and flow have been central. In general, reconciling the manifest image of the world with the image presented by science requires at least some tacit understanding of how minds work. And because the evidence for our theories ultimately comes from experience, eventually we have to be able to bring the mind itself firmly under the scope of our physical theories. On the other hand, there is a set of philosophical controversies about the relationship between the mental and the physical that many people believe physics would do well to steer clear of. This chapter argues for a division between the aspects of the mind that physics must cope with and those that it can ignore. I argue the most difficult unresolved questions about the mind can be ignored without affecting progress in physics.
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.