Philosophy is perhaps the best category for this paper, which crosses the boundaries of various specialties. I have attempted to incorporate an interpretation of quantum phenomena into a still rough-hewn signal model of perception. Appendix B has results of experiments in the manufacture of unusual coincidences1x, which, not fulfilling rigorous experimental standards nor being classically replicable, are meant as food for thought.
There is a type of logic proof that gives a first approximation of the proof followed by one or more versions that hone and amplify the initial sketch. This paper does something of the sort, though no precise result is reached and certainly we are not aiming for any nail-on-the-head proofs. A principal reason for much of the fuzziness stems from the problem of defining terms, so many of which are interdependent or that have axiomatic roots that are hard to fathom. Even so, it is hoped that once the somewhat fuzzy pieces have been read, a larger Gestalt will emerge.
Disclaimer: Though I cite some of the ideas of such persons as Jung and Freud, I wish to make clear that I do not endorse any particular psycho-social theory, nor do I wish to revive old political controversies.
Though issues of psychology enter our discussion, we leave the lion's
share of psychodynamics to others. Similarly, we avoid the minutiae of
neuroscience. Our aim is to abstract a process, in the same vein as
Turing's abstraction of a universal computer. Yet, we bypass most of
the mathematics on the basis that most of the mathematical groundings
are already well known.
A sketch of our line of thinking: the Schroedinger cat paradox
demonstrates that "concrete" reality is far more ephemeral than is
usually believed. In this sense Berkeley was right. Similarly, our
intuitive sense of linear time biases our opinion as to what
constitutes the perceived past and reality. The brain processes
signals and manufactures a, for the most part, cohesive narrative
which it perceives as "hard reality." But this reality is more
dreamlike than is generally understood. Bizarre coincidences, or
synchronicities, are a result of what I call phenomenon wave interference.
Philosophy, time and motion
You're stuck with a grotesque and absurd illusion, the idea of time as
an ever-rolling stream... There's one thing quite certain in this
business: the idea of time as a steady progression from past to future
is wrong. I know very well we feel this way about it subjectively. But
we're victims of a confidence trick. -- Fred Hoyle (1)
Zeno, later fortified by Bishop Berkeley's criticism of differential
calculus, has also told us that there is something distinctly odd
about time and motion. Some may believe that Karl Weierstrass's
epsilon-delta proofs of mathematical limits have neutralized these
issues, but of course the enigmatic nature of time and motion has
resurfaced with the theory of relativity and with quantum mechanics.
Physicist Alan Lightman (2) makes the point that the quantum energy limit
means that if one raises a swing to a particular height Y, the
potential energy is nh, with n an integer and h Planck's energy
constant. So our idea that we may raise the swing to any height
between 0 and Y is wrong. Yes, the gap between allowed energies
corresponds to changes in height of about 10
(-33) inch, but we still
have the question, what happens to the swing between n and n+1?
Apparently, it does not exist in an intuitive sense. The swing (or
some small region on it) exists in a frozen state (instantaneously)
for each allowed height. At the next height, the swing region
miraculously appears again. There is no transition between n and n+1!
One is of course reminded of how motion pictures work, with slightly
different still frames run together to form a smooth impression of
something we call motion.
So Zeno had a point. One never really crosses a distance measured in
terms of the real number line. One crosses a Planck distance measured
in integers only. But then Newton had a point. The derivative, or
fluxion, represents instantaneous time. That is, the duration of the
time interval is zero, and this mathematical concept has been to some
extent confirmed by quantum mechanics (though for strict rigor, if not
in practice, quantum mechanics requires the use of finite difference
calculus). Actually, 0 is also an enigmatic concept in quantum theory,
whereby we are faced with quantum limits on the definition of time and
distance which are, of course, interdependent with the notion of
energy.
There are, of course, many more puzzles concerning quantum phenomena
and time, such as Alain Aspect's validation of Bell's inequality, a
sensational result that has stirred no end of wrangling but which
assuredly points to a difficulty with coming to terms with the
concepts of time and history.
Suppose we have two detectors A and B where A is closer to the source
of an entangled pair than B. The observer looks at B and finds that,
say, the result is "spin up," implying that -- ignoring the
possibility of error -- detector A must say "spin down." But if A's
state is in superposition until observed, then so is B's. Yet once A
is looked at, B's result is determined. Yet the particle, according to
the classical view, arrived at A before its partner arrived at B. Some
have argued that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen problem implies
instantaneous, faster-than-light messaging between the detectors. But
in this scenario, if a message is sent from A to B, the implication is
that it went backward in time.
Following John Archibald Wheeler, we have the scenario of a photon
that had a, say 50-50 probability of taking a clockwise or
counterclockwise hyperbolic curve around a gravitational-lensing star.
That star might be billions of light-years distant. So did the
observation of the photon determine an event that occurred billions of
years ago?
Or consider the wrinkles in the cosmic background radiation, which are
supposed to have been a consequence of quantum fluctuations more than
13 billion years ago. These erratic fluctuations are credited with the
irregularities that eventually led to formation of stars, galaxies and
life on earth. Yet such "fluctuations" are a consequence of
observation. Had the wrinkles been detected on some other day, a very
different observable universe would presumably be seen. Maybe the moon
wouldn't be there, after all. And yet, somehow the wrinkles have
become "concrete-ized" so that different observers will fairly well
agree that they are about the same whenever and wherever observed,
much like the moon.
Asked whether the observer influences the observed object, Wheeler
replied, "The observer does not influence the past. Instead, by his
choice of question, he decides about what feature of the object he
shall have the right to make a clear statement." (3)
In his autobiography, Wheeler writes that measurement of the photon
"in some sense determined that history" but that a measurement is a
mechanical registration not requiring a conscious observer. (4)
This almost seems like a quibble. From the perspective of the
observer, only one history becomes available once a question is asked
and answered by "collapse of the wave function."
So if an entangled message was not sent via Einsteinian spacetime,
what is the correct description? I do not propose a full answer to the
question except to say that bilocalism seems to imply a cosmic fabric
that is deeper than our usual phenomenal belief system. Nobelist Brian
Josephson (Google his home page for link to paper) has argued that
quantum bilocalism might well be linked to the bilocalism of
paranormal events, an idea that has made him a most unwelcome presence
in some scientific quarters.
David Bohm, who struggled to eliminate fundamental randomness from quantum mechanics, nevertheless strongly defended the necessity of nonlocality. "We have not yet found what we would regard as a valid logical reason for dismissing nonlocality. We are therefore led to ask whether there could not be some other kind of reason. It may well be that one of the main reasons that people dislike the concept of nonlocality can be found in the history of science. For in the early period of the development of science there was a long struggle to get free from what may perhaps have been regarded as primitive, supernatural and magical notions in which nonlocality clearly played a key part. Perhaps there has remained a deep fear that the mere consideration of nonlocality might reopen the flood gates for what are felt to be irrational thoughts that lurk barely beneath the surface of modern culture." But, even so, he writes, the "right to enquire freely" must be upheld. (5)
Then we have Einstein's discoveries that time is a function of
velocity (in special relativity) or, actually, acceleration (in
general relativity) and his overthrow of simultaneity, a necessary
idea in Newton's background frame of "equably flowing" time. (Newton,
by the way, strongly suspected that there was more to the world than
what he described in Principia, and spent much of his life as an
alchemist seeking to unravel the mysteries behind the world of
phenomena.)
Einstein's friend, Kurt Goedel, found a set of solutions to the
differential equations of general relativity in which it was in
principle possible to go forward into the past. Einstein, while not
disputing Goedel, wondered whether such solutions had any relation to
physical reality. But Goedel was convinced that if one solution of
Einstein's field equations showed such a result, then there was a
disturbing problem with the conception of the lapse of time, even if
we don't actually live in such a universe.(6) After all, he noted,
whether closed time-like loops exist would only depend on the
arrangement of mass in the cosmos. We might add, why should a cosmos
such as ours exist with such an anthropic preference?
If both Goedel and Einstein are correct, then should we not be
prepared to construe time as a perceptual matter?
This point is underscored by Richard Feynman and others who considered that
particles can and do "travel backward" in time. If so, can time be
said to exist at all?
Reflecting Hermann Minkowski's definition of a light year as equal to
i second, Stephen Hawking has argued for "imaginary" time. All complex
numbers on the plane can be mapped onto a sphere with the north pole
point representing the point at infinity on the plane. Might not time
behave similarly, whereby the closer one gets to the finite beginning
of time, the closer one gets to eternity?
Consider the matter of metabolic rate and awareness. In some sense, a
fly is certainly aware of its surroundings. But what is its
now? It
lives fast and dies soon, by comparison with a human, whose
now is
much longer. A being who is much larger and slower than a human would
presumably regard the human
now as amusingly short. And what would a
being of cosmic scale regard as
now? Might not such a
now be immensely
long, possibly even eternal?
This said, we should acknowledge that the sense of now is of course
limited by the quantum limit on time subdivision and it seems
plausible that it is a peculiar function of consciousness. A percept,
in the sense of a small process that precedes and includes
consciousness, would be a kernel of this now, I suppose.
In fact, neuroscience experiments have determined that direct, unitary
perception of an event "now" lasts between 0.02 and 2 seconds. For
visual experience, the percept or "now" length is about 0.01 s, for
auditory experience the duration is about 0.02 s. A continuous sensory
stimulus lasts no more than 1.5 to 2 s.
Admittedly, we have not properly defined now. But the point is that
what we call time is closely related to perception, and we are faced
with a form of the chicken-or-the-egg problem.
All this is well known, but it in fact runs counter to the intuitive
sensibilities of many scientists. They know of these disturbing
issues, but most of their bread-and-butter work involves standard
"equably flowing" time and they brush aside questions concerning
causality as matters of interpretation that can be dispensed with.
Yet this prejudice may hinder alternative ways of discussing physical
reality, ways that in fact evoke strong, and occasionally irrational,
protest.(7)
The issue of solipsism
"Inconsistency," it has been said, "is the hobgoblin of small minds."
But without that concept, logic, mathematics and science in general
would not exist. Scientists prize consistency and tend to disdain the
self-referencing problems of Russell, Goedel and Turing.
Even so, Goedel's incompleteness theorem tells us that our ability to
analyze has limits. But within those limits, scientists have tended to
favor linear formulae, such as those of Newton, because they give a
good measure of predictability. Whenever feasible, non-linear systems
are approximated with linear equations. Yet, as systems become more
complex, predictability tends to decline and non-linear feedback
reigns. Chaos theory and results from catastrophe theory show that
non-linear systems can evolve toward fundamental unpredictability (the
noise amplitude equals or exceeds the desired signal), supercomputers
notwithstanding.
It is non-controversial that perceived reality is influenced by the
brain's processing routines. But to what degree is that reality
dependent on the brain? If it is "too much," then can we say that some
absolute, equably evolving, external background frame of reality (or
information) exists?
Solipsism is the notion that the only certifiable reality is what
one's mind entertains, which contrasts with the scientific tradition
of categorizing working sets of abstractions that are independent of
any one mind. Hence, there is a strong bias among scientists in favor
of an absolute background reality. An altered state of consciousness
is viewed as a pathology related to mental illness, brain damage, drug
use, extreme emotional stress, fatigue or sensory deprivation.
Yet the fact that fear (the root of much mental illness), brain damage
or some extreme psychic disturbance can completely derange "reality,"
might give us some insight into the "normal waking state." In both
normal and abnormal cognitive states, the brain is processing and
decoding signals via a sophisticated negative feedback control system
(though some acute episodes of mental dysfunction are a consequence of
the emergence of positive feedback).
To a great extent, students of neuroscience and perception have found
that much, if not all, of perceived "reality" is manufactured. If we
think of "reality" as a data stream strongly influenced by the
interaction of a scanning device with the environment (while
conceding, in line with Chomsky, that some of the "core reality" is
hard-wired), the distinction between "normal" and "abnormal"
perception boils down to the sentient being's success at survival and,
perhaps, procreation.
In his book
About Time, Paul Davies raises the solipsism issue: "In
fact, how can we be sure that the universe wasn't created a hundred
years ago, with everything arranged to appear as if it were much
older. Or, for that matter, perhaps the world started five minutes
ago, and we were all made with consistent memories of our earlier
activities [planted?] in our brains. Even more interesting would be if
our memories varied a bit, to inflame controversies like the number of
gunmen who killed President Kennedy." (8)
This last point is of some interest. We would expect that slightly
different reality histories would clash. The question is, is there an
"actual reality" against which the conflicting memories can be
matched? Or are attempts at forensic inquiry fatally tainted because
investigation brings about new realities (or histories)? Essentially,
what we would like to know is whether a set of absolute truths -- an
equably flowing absolute background reality -- exists and, if so, what
form it takes. It would seem that some such absolute system is
necessary, but there is no guarantee that it will be the background
reality implicitly assumed by most physicists.
As an analog, let us, in terms of a computer terminal screen, consider
Einstein's belief that phenomenal reality suffices. Suppose we
have some very smart people from a lost Pacific island who, for the
first time, encounter a modern computer terminal that is showing a
group of videos. The keyboard is missing. They examine the imagery and
postulate various rules for the behavior of the phenomena. Fine. But
what is the chance they will be able to work out the deeper reality of
the electronic system running the program from simply viewing the
screen's videos?
Nonlinearity comes into play here. As individuals interact and
exchange information, we might expect that their perceptions of "past
events" would tend to merge. Still, I am uncomfortable with the idea
that reality is so malleable that it is pointless to wonder about
government conspiracies. But that's only personal prejudice, of
course.
We are dealing with a matter of degree. We cannot rule out that some
knowledgeable observers are not in denial about the circumstances of
JFK's death or the attacks of 9/11, but are actually living in some
other world that somehow interacts with your world and mine. (Even so,
I feel quite certain that denial -- repression of unwelcome truths --
is a common psychological phenomenon greatly exploited by political
elites.)
Information, entropy and perception
We can accept Shannon's definition of information as the negative of
the log of the probability of the detection of some symbol and his
associated definition of entropy.
An oft-unnoticed implication here is that a message requires some form
of control in order to counteract noise, which is to say entropy. A
message conveyed through a sequence of signaling systems will degrade
over time (as the childhood game of "telephone" should convince us).
In other words, if information is to be retained, energy, directed
into error-correcting codes and algorithms, must be continually added
to the transmission system (though in the ideal, there is a limit to how much
error-correction is necessary to obtain a perfectly noiseless channel). This,
of course, dovetails nicely with the entropy and conservation laws of thermodynamics.
Sometimes we might like to be sure that some information string is not
only of relatively low probability, but reflects what we sometimes
loosely call order. The string 010101... may be of low probability and
yet constitute a message of low value. A means around this would be to
append the information in the error-correction code to the information
in the message.
The inclusion of error-correction information then leads us to accept
that information is really a mental construct, even if that construct
is common to a number of minds. Information requires work, which we
account for via the error-correction process. In fact, though work is
defined as equivalent to energy (W = K = 1/2mv
2), my thinking is that
the difference between the two is that work carries with it a higher
level of information than does energy in general. That is, some of the
energy of the system goes into what might be called an
error-correcting process. This diversion of energy, coupled with the
First Law of Thermodynamics, then accounts for the Zeroth Law that
rules out perpetual motion machines for high-variable systems.
(Nevertheless, if we cast work in terms of efficiency, then work of
low efficiency implies high entropy. And as for the impossibility of a
perpetual motion engine, this applies to a repetition of a
high-information state, which is extraordinarily improbable.)
So the tendency toward increased entropy implies that information --
viewed as a transmitted or stored message -- is time-dependent. In
fact, the concept is, like energy, an abstraction of a process that to
a great extent depends on activities of the brain.
From a classical perspective, Boltzmann entropy, Shannon entropy
and the "arrow of time" can be reconciled thus: We consider a
dynamical system at some time t
0 to be represented by a single net
force vector. In the case of a gas in a sealed container, the vector
is close to 0. This vector is the sum of all the constituent force
vectors at t
0. (We can also notionally calculate from t
a to t
b.)
For even mildly complicated systems, the information in the net vector
V is insufficient to tell us which "path" brought about V. That is, V
is the sum of all other force vectors and we cannot know the order of
summation. Hence, we say that entropy has increased and reversibility
is impossible.
In quantum terms, the arrow of time -- to wit, irreversibility --
follows from the general non-commutability of matrices in matrix
mechanics. The few cases where AB = BA represent the relatively rare
symmetrical systems.
In addition, broken symmetry occurs at the particle level, whereby
violation of geometric parity implies a noncommutative relation.
This viewpoint would appear to accord well with Neils Bohr's position
that knowledge of quantum events is limited to the questions we are
able to ask, though Bohr was anxious to disentangle the macro-world
from quantum weirdness.
Wheeler has said that the cosmos cannot be a giant machine ruled by
any pre-established continuum law (please see my paper On Hilbert's
sixth problem found at
http://kryptograff.blogspot.com/2007/06/on-hilberts-sixth-problem.html ),
which would seem to suggest that he does not favor the idea that the
universe can be expressed as a sum of units of information.
One of the issues when it comes to perception is that the entropy law
implies that mental constructs, or phenomenon signals and memories,
fade or fail. Their tendency toward extinction is, we suggest, based
on the emotion level attached to these constructs, a point discussed
below.
This E-value corresponds to the strength of the error-correction code,
even though a strong E-value might induce what is construed to be
memory distortion.
The entropy of the brain's programs, such as memory templates that
fade out if not reinforced, is an obvious consequence of natural
systems. In an imperfectly conducting cable -- or set of circuits --
sine waves of different frequencies travel at slightly different
velocities, yielding delay distortion, a smearing out of the wave
packet and its form. That is, virtually any signal tends to get
noisier and noisier over time simply as a result of its principal
media.
Interpretation of quantum results
I well realize that the term interpretation has become a catch-all
means of evading the logical implications of material acausality and
bilocalism, as if interpretation is a matter to be left to
philosophers, mystics, poets and cranks. If one is interested in mere
brute-force calculation, then this view will serve. But recall that
Einstein was highly interested in interpretation in his 1905
relativity paper. In fact, his interpretation of physical reality so
as to exclude an ether is among the things that distinguish his
relativity paper from Poincare's 1904 paper and a reason why he, not
Poincare, is honored for the breakthrough. The wrong interpretation
was impeding scientific insight. In a similar vein, Einstein's theory
of gravity reinterprets the physical description of space.
Suppose for the moment that we divorce conscious awareness from the
cosmos. Then one might say that the cosmos just is -- no causes, no
effects, just an undifferentiated whole. (This still isn't quite
right, there being no observer to make this appraisal.) This whole is
sometimes called a spacetime block. Without the mind to experience
motion, there is no distance and no time. And, if we think in terms of
a manifold of greater than 3+t dimensions, the block, taken as a
whole, is frozen.
So let us consider the three principal interpretations of quantum reality:
Wheeler has pointed out that a quasar billions of light years out is
seen in two positions because of gravitational lensing of an
interposing galaxy. If one uses a detector to observe a single photon,
would not that imply that the photon's trajectory to the left or right
of the quasar was determined by the observer, even though the galaxy
is hundreds of millions of light years away?
Interestingly, when Bohr, Max Born and Wolfgang Pauli defended the
Copenhagen interpretation and strongly criticized Einstein's "hidden
variables" belief (a phrase none used but which succinctly describes
Einstein's position), Einstein retorted by pointing out that the
Schroedinger thought experiment (Einstein substituted a mechanical
recorder for the cat) scaled up quantum weirdness into the macroscopic
world, something he thought to be unacceptable though not logically
impossible.(10)
[I hasten to point out here that Pauli's position as of 1949 that what is
now called the Copenhagen interpretation is completely satisfactory
should be taken into account when discussing his apparent sympathy
with Carl Jung's notion of synchronicity.]
Consider this scenario:
A human DNA mutation may occur when a high-energy particle collides
with chromosomes, causing a rewriting of the stored information.
Hence, cosmic rays, nuclear reactor leaks or even sunlight photons can
cause mutations. Quantum rules are used to describe all these
particles and their detections.
Now suppose a person -- absent any medical or family-history reason --
decides to be tested for a hereditary disorder. According to the Von
Neumann postulate, the collapse of the dangerous particle's wave
function doesn't occur until he or she reads or hears the result of
the test. Prior to that detection, the photon was in a superposed
state and cannot have been said to have interacted with the chromosome
of some ancestor.
I once posed this conundrum to a physicist who had written a popular
article and he replied that such an absurdity was why he subscribed to
the decoherence arguments propounded by David Lindley.(11). He then begged
off further correspondence, telling me that he had recently discovered
that he had a hereditary disorder.
Interestingly, Wheeler, who spurns the need for a conscious observer
as a determinant of history, nowhere in his autobiography mentions the
Schroedinger cat thought experiment.
At this juncture, I would like to address a point of confusion that
has entered into the debate. According to some, the rapid decoherence
of the waves constituting macro-phenomena implies that Schroedinger's
cat is only in a live/dead superposition for a very short, effectively
unobservable time, and so there is no real measurement problem for
large objects.
Two points:
However, let us consider a cloud chamber or scintillator track of a
quantum particle. What do we see? A sequence of water droplets formed
around the ionized atoms, where the least squares method gives the
particle's fictional "continuous" trajectory. Each droplet is
correlated with a quantum action (movement of a valence electron) that
was emitted by an atom that was "close enough" to the transient
particle for an energy exchange. Because the atoms are jiggling about,
the sequence of blobs is irregular. If it were possible to fire
another particle with the same energy and precision (not possible), we
would see a different path, because atoms would not reliably intersect
in the same places with the particle.
Now consider what happens as we look at a quantum measurement. There
is a sequence of intermediate quantum events. So in most cases there
is some very large number of quantum paths between the "external"
detection and the brain's cognition. So each leg of each path is in
superposition at the micro-level. We may then regard each path as in
superposition with all the other paths. In other words, our
interaction with the measurement requires a set of superpositions of
states. Yes, this set of superpositions doesn't last long, but we
haven't got rid of the cat conundrum by appeal to "decoherence." There
is actually a large set of live states and another large set of dead
states that link to the observer's consciousness.
Related to the decoherence viewpoint is the ensemble argument which
says that quantum events can only be assessed statistically. One
simply does not ask about the cat's state before observation.
But if one does wonder about the cat's state when one is not looking,
the implication is that all these quantum paths to the cat are untaken
and so in superposition. If we choose to think in terms of linear
time, then the state of the unobserved cat is bothersome. But, if we
accept that time is not some sort of equably flowing river, then
perhaps we can accept the implication that phenomenal reality is not
so "concrete" as one might think.
Bohr's interpretation essentially required that a sharp distinction be
drawn between the experimental apparatus and the observer, but such a
program doesn't really work. As Bell said, "The problem of measurement
and the observer is the problem of where measurement begins and ends,
and where the observer begins and ends. Consider my spectacles, for
example: if I take them off now, how far away must I put them before
they are part of the object rather than part of the observer? There
are problems like this all the way from the retina through the optic
nerve to the brain and so on." (Quoted in The Ghost in the Atom,
P.C.W. Davies, J.R. Brown, ed, Cambridge 1986.)
It should be noted that Bohr's thinking evolved over time, but when he
took into account the observer, it was as a way of saying that the
lack of distinction between observer and observed limited what we can
know about the physical world. "There is no quantum world. There is
only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think
that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics
concerns what we can say about nature," Bohr is reported (12) to have
said.
As Bell notes in Ghost in the Atom (13), Aspect's finding of strong
correlation for entangled pairs makes the measurement problem harder
"because Einstein's view that behind the quantum world lies a familiar
classical world was a possible (and now discarded) way of solving the
measurement problem -- a way of reducing the observer to an incidental
role in the physical world.
Similarly, Pascual Jordan said that "observations not only disturb
what has been measured, they produce it." (14)
Questioned about whether some inanimate device could replace a mind in
a quantum measurement, Rudolph Peierls responded in the negative (13). A
quantum experiment "goes on until you can throw away one possibility
and keep only the other" which is when "you finally become conscious
of the fact that the experiment has given one result."
Peierls insisted that "there is a quality of human beings, call it
mind, that distinguishes us from the other objects in our environment
and which is absolutely crucial for making sense of fundamental
physics."
In fact, quite a number of physicists agreed with Albert Lande's battle, made prominent in books published prior to 1970, to get rid of the duality problem of quantum physics (14a). However, Aspect's results greatly undermined such attempts.
As Nick Herbert said of the Von Neumann interpretation, "In Von
Neumann's consciousness-created world, things (or at least their
dynamic attributes), do not exist until some mind actually perceives
them, a rather drastic conclusion but one to which this great
mathematician was forced by sheer logic once he had decided to take
the quantum measurement problem seriously." (15)
Bohm, who was sharply critical of Von Neumann's interpretation, nevertheless was unwilling to rule out the brain's influence and chides neuroscientists for an overly classical approach. He notes that "we know now that the retinal cells respond to a few quanta at a time and that this response leads to the multiplication of effects to the classical level of intensity," adding: "But the retina is just an extension of the brain. There could evidently be other parts of the brain in which such a sensitivity may exist, e.g. in certain kinds of synapses. If this were the case, then the brain could, like a measuring apparatus, manifest and reveal aspects of the quantum world in the other processes. Such quantum sensitivity would imply that there are more subtle possibilities of behavior of the brain, and a classical analysis would break down." (16)
Eugene Wigner's view (17) was that conscious reality is absolute and that
physical reality is dependent on conscious reality.
Consider the case of Wigner's friend. Suppose Wigner sets up a quantum
measurement and is prepared to see whether a particle is, say, spin up
or spin down. Under Von Neumann's postulate, the superposition remains
until Wigner actually looks at the detector. But suppose Wigner is in
the next room and calls out to his friend to look at the detector and
shout out the result of the experiment. Is the friend in a superposed
state until Wigner hears the answer?
In his book
Physics and Philosophy (18), James Jeans concludes
that the debate over whether material phenomena
are mental forms or whether mental forms are a consequence of material
phenomena seems to be leaning toward the former. He once said that
"the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a
great machine." (19)
Fred Hoyle, the British astrophysicist, was another backer of Von
Neumann observer-centrality, arguing that the attempt to separate the
macro and micro worlds via statistics wouldn't always work. His
variant of the Schroedinger cat scenario was a bomb rigged to a
quantum device. If one doesn't look at the device, presumably the bomb
both explodes and doesn't explode. This, he insisted, means that
consciousness is crucial to reality. (20)
The many worlds interpretation might be construed as an attempt to
bring some external background reality back into science and dispose
of the distasteful subjectivity implicit in observer-formed reality.
But this interpretation has its own problems. (Bohm says that Everett's
scenario is really a many minds interpretation (16), as opposed to Bryce
Dewitt's formulation of many worlds (21).)
David Deutsch has defended his "weakly interfering" many worlds view
by saying that, with the entire universe described as a wave equation,
there is no longer a need for strong subjectivity in quantum theory.
Hawkings, by positing a no-boundary universe (roughly analagous to a
Mobius band, perhaps), suggested that the wave equation description
could be adopted with "initial conditions" being similar to the point
at infinity on the complex sphere's projection onto the complex plane.
Hawkings also seems to favor demoting the observer to minor status.
What bothers Seth Lloyd about the many worlds interpretation is his
experiential reality of the ego as the center of the universe. A
backer of Gell-Mann's many histories idea, Lloyd finds it troublesome
that there would be many variants of himself in split-off universes,
but Deutsch responds that these split-off universes do not strongly
interfere and so there is no need for concern. (See Lloyd's home page
to read the Lloyd-Deutsch debate.)
Topologist Jim Conant has pointed out that the many worlds scenario
means that there is one world in which an individual has missed every
life-threatening accident of nature as opposed to all his fellows, who
have not survived. This person would live alone indefinitely in one of
these universes. Though we will not use the "obviously silly" argument
to dispute this interpretation, surely such a scenario raises
significant philosophical issues.
Commenting on the Schroedinger cat problem, Leonard Susskind asserts
that the only way to avoid the difficulty of wave function collapse
"is to include the entire observable universe as well as the branches
of the wave function in the quantum description." Susskind favors a
multi-bubble-universe model. (22).
But Rolf Landauer opposes such a view. "We caution those who invoke
the wave function of the universe. How can that wave function be
recorded, unless you have a second and separate universe available for
that?" (23). So there would need to be an infinity of Susskind bubbles and
the ultimate recorder would never be reached.
Bohm eventually settled on the analogy of the hologram to
describe his notion of "implicate order," whereby a hidden process
might be behind seemingly strange results.(24) His "quantum potential"
permitted instantaneous signaling, which brings the notions of space
and time into question.
Bohr emphasized the concept of "complementarity," as in the wave
complementing the particle. From what I can gather, he perhaps means
"two sides of the same coin." Or, perhaps he was suggesting something
like interdependence of definitions. For example, Euclid gives us a
line in terms of points or points in terms of a line. They strictly
imply each other.
Similarly, we might view complementarity to mean that clashing
concepts result because A <--> B. Notice that when A <--> B we cannot
say A causes B or the converse.
When A <--> ~A, of course, we have an inconsistent system. However,
this doesn't hold for waves and particles because we say that
detection of A --> no detection of ~A (detection of a wave implies a lone
particle hasn't been detected), though we don't have a visualizable
picture of why the types of detection differ.
Abraham Pais reports (22a) that Bohr thought of complementarity as akin to
two Riemann surfaces, a concept he encountered in a course on complex
analysis. We can see that Bohr was thinking topologically, in the
sense that two Riemann surfaces reconcile related but mutually
exclusive mathematical objects.
Interestingly, Einstein used Riemann topology for his general theory
of relativity, but apparently did not grasp how Riemannian concepts
could undermine the principle of causality. On the other hand, Bohr's
intuitive topology is essentially a heuristic device.
To paraphrase Bohr, we might say that complementarity is akin to two
branches separated by a branch cut. Sometimes the cut is placed at a
singularity. So z
(-1/2) has two branches with a singularity at z = 0. We
might suggest the singularity brings to mind the unobservable
component whereby wave and particle are somehow fused in an undefined
way.
Though this is an interesting analogy, we should caution that plenty
of situations have multiple branches. For example, ln(z) has an
infinity of branches (because ln(z) = 2i(pi + k), where k is any
integer). Similar analogies can be made for Riemann surfaces.
Of course, the usual meaning of complement is expressed symbolically:
A' = A\B where B is a subset of A. This equation expresses dualism
nicely but is trivial in terms of causality or acausality.
To be blunt, complementarity strikes this writer as so much
hand-waving.
However, David Wick suggests (22b) that Bohr's "complementarity" idea may well stem from his reading of William James, who wrote of an experiment in which a subject was given post-hypnotic suggestion to be blind to card numbers that were multiples of 3. Upon awakening, the subject denied seeing any cards labeled 3, 6 or 9, though her hand, as she was speaking, picked up exactly those cards.
James refers to these cases as representing "relations of mutual exclusion" found when the mind has been compartmentalized into distinct consciousnesses.
James, in his
Principles of Psychology, wrote that, at the least, in certain persons, "the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist but mutually ignore each other, and share the objects of knowledge between them. More remarkable still, they are complementary. Give an object to one of the consciousnesses, and by that fact you remove it from the other or others." [Full quote in footnote (22c).]
This result is quite similar to results of experiments with brain damaged patients, and also brings to mind my Necker cube example.
Abstraction and causality
When we say that A causes B, what do we mean? Ordinarily we mean that
phenomenon A, or, better, signal A is linearly associated with B in
time (A reliably occurs before B). If A is an input into the brain
processor, there is an inference that B will be a following input.
We might regard this as a black box scenario. Input of signal A into
the box is expected to be followed by the output of signal B. However,
if we decide to look inside the black box, we will find another black
box. The notion of scientific advance might be seen as a set of
nestled black boxes. But the set is not infinite. We reach the "last
black box" when we reach quantum limits. If one thinks of causation as
equivalent to branching trees of energy exchanges, then at the quantum
level there are no more energy exchanges that can form a link between
two phenomena.
Yet the phenomena A and B (the cause and the effect) are names given
to patterns, or that is to say, signals and signal templates
(memories).
But what is a phenomenon? The best answer is to say that it is a
signal with key components that remain constant. That is, we assume
that phenomenon X expresses a thing or event that is replicated or
recurs. But in actuality X is normally an approximation and
abstraction of many experiences. So empirically one's brain determines
that when A occurs, the probability is high that B follows. When the
learned probability is very high, we say that "A causes B," forgetting
that A and B are as much abstractions as a Euclidean line. This
abstraction is real as a limiting or axiomatic form but is not itself
replicable, except perhaps as a memory template. (The ideal of a horse
is the set of attributes that define what we mean by this phenomenon.)
However, mathematics, mathematical logic and hard sciences don't seem
altogether empirical. Yet, what we have in science is a system of
relations as in "if xRy and yRz, then xRz." So pure math and logic
provides a system or systems of abstraction that are used to undergird
the relations found by physicists and other scientists. Still, these
science relations are based on assumptions about abstractions such as
massive object, force and energy which "work" in the sense that they
can be used for assigning higher or lower probabilities to "A implies
B."
But even if one proves that xSv implies xRy, one can rarely be sure
that that abstraction x represents a unique information string rather than
some unordered set of such strings. If the latter, sometimes some x_0
will occur without being paired to any y, forcing us to account for
such outliers by incorporating a margin of error.
But my basic point is that cause and effect are in many respects a
product of the mind's means of perception and estimation. Whether
there are causes and effects in some background frame of reality is
not evident.
What is meant by the word abstraction? This is a freighted question,
and we will avoid most of the deep philosophical issues, but certainly
it is related to the concept of codification, whereby a short data
string is used to represent a longer one. Note that if a coding is
going on, then there is information in the function that transforms
string A into string B, and so abstractions tend to have relatively
high information values.
One might also accept that modern naive set theory, or an axiomatic
formalism such as Zermelo-Fraenkel, is a good basis for
conceptualization. Further -- realizing that much computer math can be
represented with matrices or, in general, via group theory -- we can
think of a data set embedded in a matrix. For example, suppose we have
some well-chosen augmented square matrix AB, where B is a column
vector whose elements are all 1's. Then A, through a sequence of
row-column transformations, can be uniquely represented as as IA', or
simply A'. Now A' condenses the data of A (though the number of bits
per column element tends to rise) so that it can be said to uniquely
represent A.
The information content increases with each transformation.
We can of course stop anywhere between A and A' and the intermediary
matrix CD might be construed to have a lower level of abstraction than
A'.
Of course an abstraction, expressing some recurrent pattern, is
worthless -- in fact, can't exist -- without memory. The pattern must
be stored for potential use later, though patterns left unused may
extinguish. We suggest that any perceptual pattern X -- the memory
template -- has an emotion value associated with it, which helps
prioritize the brain's tasks. That is, X has a pain (avoidance) value
between 0 and some maximum, and likewise for pleasure (attraction). If
X has a (0,0) value, then it probably would not be retained in
storage.(26)
Clearly, a pattern's E-value can and does evolve with time,
as the bio-system records a value for each new occurrence of X and
then uses a weighted averaging method to assign a new value. These two
scores are used to prioritize the system's handling of the recognized
signal. The overall process is made obvious from the phenomenon of
extinction, whereby a desire-based or fear-based behavior gradually
extinguishes if no signficant association with reward or punishment
occurs during recurrences of X. (Of course, there is always the
possibility that non-learned -- "hard-wired" -- reactions to specific
signals can have a relatively constant E-value over time.)
So pattern recognition -- which we shall discuss further later on --
and causality go hand in hand. There are various logico-mathematical
systems for encapsulating the idea of causality. It is handy that the
matrix multiplication rule for AB = C can be construed as a cause of
C. This analogy -- it is perhaps more than an analogy -- reflects the
principle of entropy, or, that is, the apparent asymmetry of time. The
fact that BA need not equal C echoes this asymmetry.
Heisenberg was deeply concerned with the causality issue, though he
believed that the mathematics sufficed to give quantum relations and
that there was little point in trying to draw a three-dimensional
machine that would fit inside a "black box." He certainly had a
precedent. Newton's theory of gravitation gave the relations without
trying to peek into the cause of "action at a distance." Field
theories seem to get rid of that problem, only to disclose on further inspection equally
difficult problems with linear causality.
Various problems in quantum theory, it seems, result from the fact
that black boxes are always necessary. For example, the procedure of
renormalization is needed to lop off infinities so that calculations
are possible. But many are dissatisfied. However, the method gets
results, even if it doesn't "make sense" in accord with standard
causality, just as Heisenberg's matrices got results, even though
there was no system of levers and pulleys "underneath."
Multiplexing possibilities
We regard the normal human brain as a signal processor that employs a
feedback control mechanism.
Before elaborating on the concepts of "signal" and "feedback," let us
consider "multiplexing," which is the encoding, transmission and
decoding of two or more approximately simultaneous signals.
If we consider a signal as represented by some wave form, then, using,
say Fourier analysis, that wave form can be decomposed into lower
amplitude components (perhaps harmonics). Now it is unsurprising that
two wave forms -- signals -- can superpose. So a scanner tuned to a
particular type of wave form of amplitude A will regard that form as
the signal and the complement form of amplitude B as noise. Obviously,
the scanner's decoding program is critical to determining which signal
is received and which is ignored.
In the communications industry, analog multiplexing may use
amplitude or frequency modulation, whereas digital multiplexing is
usually done by weaving together messages based on time intervals,
knowledge of those intervals being essential for decoding.
Another possibility: Encoder A uses binary numbers from set X intended
for Receiver A' and Encoder B uses binary numbers from set Y intended
for Receiver B'. X junction Y may or may not be disjoint. If not, either the
intersection is all noise for both parties or Receiver A' may receive
a readable, if noisy, message intended for Receiver B' (and possibly
the converse as well). Similarly, a multi-node network might yield
occasional unintended messages.
We can posit a similar idea for wave analysis. We number the harmonics
and assign one set of numbers to harmonics subset X and the other set
to harmonics subset Y. If X and Y are not disjoint, then every now and
then an unintended but meaningful message may reach a decoder.
An additional consideration: a signal or wave form may be of any
finite length (though if long it must be processed piecemeal). We can
think of the novel
Crime and Punishment as a single signal that could
be superposed over
Brothers Karamazov, another single signal. If there
is a non-empty intersection of the codes of these multiplexed signals,
a processor processing these narratives piecemeal could -- in
principle -- come up with a fairly readable, if noisy, narrative
composed of elements of both stories, though the composite story would
likely lack a satisfactory Gestalt.
Though in this example such an outcome represents an extreme
long shot, one can devise scenarios whereby such "readable but noisy"
composite narratives are much more likely. Also, we have not yet
addressed the feedback control issue in the brain's processing of
signals. (27)
Goals and behavior
A negative feedback system has one constant state, or goal, that it is
designed to maintain. That system may employ a number of secondary
feedback systems, the goals of which are elements of the primary goal.
The primary goal is hard-wired and some of the secondary goals may
also be hard-wired (archetypes, in Jungian language), whereas other
goals may be formed by the software program. This would be equivalent
to finding the best route through a maze to obtain the bit of cheese
that the animal has learned is very likely to be had.
We may represent a goal G as a matrix of numbers standing for various
signal pulse strengths. In order to satisy a matrix -- reach a goal --
the system may test a number of algorithms, each of which has some
probability of success. After a number of trials, the system selects
an algorithm with the best (or at least "good enough") success rate.
In fact, we may design neural networks such that the system runs
various sub-routines and, through repetition, learns probabilities.
The brain's means of learning seems well-represented by conditional
probability methods. Consider some primary goal and draw a tree
diagram of routes to the result. As the brain runs the system through
trials of these paths, it assigns probabilities to each leg which it
memorizes (rarely consciously). Again, the optimal path learned is not
necessarily objectively the best path. We may have parallel trees for
different goals, but these goals are still secondary to the primary
goal of pleasure/not pain, which would usually have the highest
emotion value of 2
(1/2)x
(1/2), with x very high.(26) In other words fear of
death corresponds to fear of the unknown, which carries a high pain
template value; desire to live may correspond to numerous remembered
pleasant life experiences. Clearly, this emotion value is not uniform,
as the suicide rate demonstrates. (32)
The feedback occurs in the process of testing to ensure that an
optimal path is memorized. In fact, the memory function is an
essential part of the feedback loop. Importantly, the feedback control
system may continually test paths to see whether the currently
accepted optimum still holds. But there are limits on this process as
behaviors, choices and social interactions become ever more complex.
If internal feedback control worked well at high levels of complexity,
the jails would be empty.
Plainly, pathologies ("bugs") occur in software that deploys feedback
control systems, as, for example, when self-defeating closed loops
form as addictive or repetitive compulsive behaviors. Some pathologies
occur when the brain learns that to obtain self-pleasure, it must
inflict self-pain -- though the phrases "delayed gratification" and
"no pain, no gain" reflect a need to balance fundamental goals.
The tree-diagram representation works for discrete time intervals,
whereby each tree diagram's probabilities either remain the same or
change by time interval. But the diagrams -- each corresponding to
some template memory pattern -- themselves are often continually
evolving.
While fear of the unknown has an obvious Darwinian point, delight in
the new can also be cast in Darwinian terms. The hunter must discover,
must solve problems. Also newness relates -- along with its soulmate,
creativity -- to what Freud called libido, whereby creativity is the
sublimation of sexual needs. The species prospers through heterosexual
variation -- though not too much, as that increases risk of disease.
What we are getting at is that there is a powerful mechanism to find
or produce new patterns -- but not too new. These patterns need be
composed of existing stored patterns, or memory templates, just as two
or more wave forms can superpose as a composite signal.
Again, matrices prove useful in representing goal-directed (feedback)
systems, where AB very well may not equal BA. Suppose the system has
determined that goal A cannot be achieved without sub-goals B and C.
It may also have determined that B then A obtains goal C but that the
converse doesn't work. (Markov chain matrices may prove of value when
modeling such a system.)
Cognition that a goal has been achieved is much the same as
recognition of a pattern. In the same vein as Google asking whether
you meant "New York City" rather than "New York Sity," a matrix is
considered satisfied when there is a good match of template elements
with incoming data. This form of error-forgiveness makes sense because
the probability of accuracy increases exponentially with each accurate
element. Nevertheless, this "good fit" approach is hardly infallible,
as when one calls out to a "familiar" person, only to learn that the
set of initial clues was associated with a stranger. This method of
estimation strongly influences the "construction of reality," as
discussed below.
Focus is a particularly important concept. When one thinks of focus,
one may think of some sort of conscious process, but we may roughly
define focus as the pursuit of some goal, though the goal may be some
complex mental construct. Hence focus becomes the mechanism for
pursuing and staying with a specific goal. In turn, this is a
consequence of prioritization of goals that are either hard-wired or
have been programed into the software. So focus then becomes a
function of the E-value for a specific goal. An emergent incoming
signal (or pattern) may trigger a higher E-value associated with the
stored template. The system then shifts focus.
In a human, the so-called "left-brain" pattern recognition,
abstraction and manipulation systems are sufficiently robust to yield
third- and fourth-generation software programs for obtaining goals,
meaning that the composite signal -- made up of the input signals, the
feedback loop signals and the output signals -- is, if not chaotic, at
least highly unpredictable in many respects.
It seems self-evident that consciousness is differentiated with degees
of alertness. So we'd say that a stream of consciousness can be
represented as a composite signal of variable amplitude, though an
average amplitude can be used for a basic state, corresponding to such
activities as reading an instruction manual, or dozing on the train.
The amplitude for alertness is closely related to focus.
Thoughts and thought constituents (or "sub-thoughts") would be modeled
as wave forms guided by a carrier wave, which varies, in form and
amplitude, with the higher alert states and the trance-like or
sleeping states.
So we would say that human brain's feedback control system runs both
parallel and hierarchical programs for the monitoring of incoming data
and output behavior. That output behavior includes the stream of
consciousness (though the machine paradigm may not be satisfactory
from a philosophical point of view, of course). The output, influenced
by a number of variables, has a chaotic tendency, rather like the
weather. On the other hand, as with weather forecasting, some
underlying behaviors are quite probable, as psychological warfare
experts and blackmailers have learned. Some of these sub-systems may
be linear, but the overall effect seems to be that these goal-pursuit
activities express a non-linear dynamical system.
However, in that survival depends on good estimation of outcomes, the
human mind tends to favor linear "cause-effect" interactions. In order
to obtain such linearity, it uses probabilities to determine the
likelihood of B, given A, even though the patterns A and B are in fact
generated within a non-linear system.
Construction of reality
We will give a working definition of reality as "meaningful
interaction with a perceived environment." Meaningful is any
interaction associated with some emotion value. The emotionless cold
logic of Star Trek's Mr. Spock is, we suggest, insufficient for
perception and consciousness. The amygdala's valuation of experiences
is essential for the prioritization process necessary for human
consciousness.(33) Even when one applies cold logic to the solution of a
particular problem, one does so based on some emotion-based need.
Does this mean that the "objective external environment" is
emotionally colored? In a word, yes. Focus is predicated by goals,
which have E-values. Of course, the engineer and the scientist wishes
to filter out the subjective aspects of "the environment" or problems
under study. Essentially, this means that there is an assumption that
the intersection of a number of skilled minds leaves a set of
relations that are stripped of subjectivity.
No longer is one's mind the creator. The agreed principles of reality
are said to precede this.
I have not attempted to answer either the solipsists or the
mechanistic representationalists. What is intended is to show that the
brain does indeed construct perceived reality. (Whether the manufacture
occurs before or after the fact is the
bone of contention; my suggestion is that both are true.)
The term percept is generally reserved for sentient lifeforms.
It is at the level of percept that the line of distinction between
conscious awareness and mechanistic awareness blurs, and I must leave
that blur in place. I offer no conjecture as to what constitutes the
kernel of consciousness. (34)
To approach the percept concept, let us use a heuristic device.
Consider a video. Each frame is an element of a longer signal. A
percept is analagos to a video frame. There exists some quantum
(using the term advisedly) of perception whereby the brain processes a
specified set of data (which we might represent with matrices) in some
basic time interval.
The percept occurs once a match has been made between an incoming data
set and a template pattern. This match generally occurs before it
reaches the conscious level. There is a reason for this delay. The
percept not only matches a data set against a memorized pattern, it
also must "fit" into the stream of awareness, as has been demonstrated
with the phi effect.
Hence cognition -- what occurs as a consequence of a percept or set of
percepts -- is a composite event. We should regard, at some basic
stratum, a number of percepts as being superposed (running in parallel
but having a Gestalt effect) to form a focus percept set. Again, focus
is dictated by parallel and hierarchical goals, some of which are
hard-wired and many of which are evolved from the "software."
Different brain mechanisms are scanning for various high priority
patterns. These patterns usually superpose. These superpositions may
be cast in terms of the composition of a matrix with sub-matrices, or
as the composition of a wave form with sub-wave forms, perhaps at the
level of harmonics.
So we are talking about a set of percepts represented, say, as a high
information (many superpositions) wave form. I do not say that a
percept necessarily corresponds to some harmonic. I don't know.
At any rate, we would say that a stream of consciousness may be
treated as a signal represented by a composite wave form over some
basic interval associated with a percept. As noted earlier, different
percepts have typically different durations, and so we would expect a
composite percept's duration to either be as long as the longest-time
sub-percept or to vary with the longest-time sub-percept. (35) So then,
we would treat the typical stream of consciousness as a wave form that,
within constraints, rarely shows exact replication (has high complexity).
The aperiodicity of course does not extend to the essential components,
such as biorhythmic "carrier waves" and other elemental wave forms.
In this light, we must take into account wave packet dispersion, or
delay dispersion. Though not important at the quantum level, delay
dispersion is routine in the so-called macro-world. That is, a
phenomenon signal, composed of numerous subsignals, is likely to be
subjected to delay dispersion because some of the subsignals taken
from memory are showing entropy's wear and tear. This effect also
helps to ensure that the overall reality signal is highly variable and
generally aperiodic.
Oliver Sachs has told of a noted musician whose short-term memory was
so severely limited by a brain disorder that he lived in a state where
from moment to moment he felt as if he had just become conscious,
though he could still function to some extent because process-system
memories of how to do things -- such as play music or converse -- were
still operational, though in a sharply limited sense. (36) The condition of
the musician, now deceased, demonstrates that the impression of
continuity that an unimpaired person has derives from many stored
patterns being brought into play. And, we see that some of the
feedback control systems can still run without much input of
information via the consciousness. Despite his abilities, however, the
musician was subjected to a highly unpleasant discontinuity --
somewhat akin to watching a video with far too many frames missing.
Research into visual perception demonstrates that the brain constructs
the three-dimensional view of the world. No logical or philosophical
imperative requires that the world "out there" have three spatial
dimensions. When one thinks of the word dimension, one may say that
dimensions are part of "concrete reality," but in fact they are
mathematical abstractions that we moderns use in coping with our ideas
about reality. We might easily argue that human perception
approximates within some range what happens in some n-dimensional (n
greater than 3, or 4, if you include time) manifold. In fact, the
melding of the spatial dimensions and the time dimension into a
Minkowski-Einstein spacetime continuum underscores this point.
(Interestingly, Einstein was delighted with the potential of
the Kaluza-Klein five-dimensional spacetime frame; he made a serious
effort to keep their mathematics while avoiding having spacetime be
"really" five-dimensional. Einstein's reformulation found little
favor.)
These days, string theorists suggest that we can't "see" posited extra
dimensions because they are too tiny, being "curled up" at a quantum
level. This disability would be analagous to not being able to see the
edge of some extremely thin object. Yet the idea that three space
dimensions correspond to some objective
"concrete" set of phenomena is, at root, an unproved assumption. This
cosmic stuff with which the brain interacts needn't correspond to any
visualizable images. In fact, quantum discoveries tend to underscore
that point.
The concept of dimension stems from the abstraction of the notion of
edges in Euclidean solid geometry and also is, intuitively, related to
the up-down sense from gravitational effects. We might add that the
brain's method of decoding signals as "moving objects" despite these
objects continually changing in apparent size and shape helps to
impress on us the intuitive notion of dimension. If we regard a moving
object in terms of signaling, we get some idea of how this process
works. The brain detects some core pattern and compares it with the
relatively static background visual field. The change in the
background field is perceived as motion and the incremental changes in
the "object" set give rise to the perception of morphological change.
At any rate, most cosmic stuff goes undetected by the unaided brain,
and what is detected is registered on a signal processing system used
to keep the body and brain in equilibrium (despite disequilibriums,
such as illness or wild behaviors that occur as a consequence of
systemic complexity).
The brain's determination of depth (37) is also part and parcel of our
intuitive idea of dimension. The brain uses visual clues to transform
two-dimensional surfaces into three-dimensional ones. Donald
Hoffman (38) has given a number of interesting examples of these
constructions. And, of course, the use of polarized glasses to obtain
a 3-D effect from specially phased imagery at a motion picture theater
drives home the point that visual reality is a constructive process.
Clearly depth perception is heavily dependent on wave
interference. The two-eyed vision system is a device for measuring
such interference (though the vision system is more than this, being
highly integrated into the brain's various means of processing data).
Standard photographs and paintings do not contain those interferences
and so the brain interprets them as flat, even though the brain uses
visual clues to give a measure of mock depth. In fact, it is perhaps
significant that a hologram is fractal-like in that small portions of
the photographic plate replicate the entire image in 3-D, though
precision declines with scale. This bolsters our contention that
phenomenal reality is constructed from closely packed information.
Bohm's concept of some implicit order that makes bilocalism more
determinate fits with the idea that the brain is interacting with some
sort of projection. In fact, it is clear that the brain projects some
reality. But is it possible that the brain is able to operate
analogously to a holographic projector, reading information from some
unvisualizable "place" and projecting that information via some sort
of wave interference? At any rate, the brain cannot detect a pattern
without having a closely matching template pattern for comparison. The
incoming data stream must be analyzed -- i.e., broken down into
convenient small signals that can be matched against stored signals.
But, as we tried to emphasize in the section on multiplexing, there is
often more than one way to break down the incoming data and
reconstitute it into something readable. As an analogy, one may get a
string of letters and be able to decode a sensible English sentence
plus some noise and a sensible Swedish sentence plus some noise. The
processor must know what it's looking for.
So we see that, in principle, there is no way to distinguish actual
reality from virtual reality, a point well known to science fiction
writers but not well accepted by most scientists. (39) As optical
illusions and ambiguous patterns demonstrate, the brain constructs a
phenomenon based on stored data. In the case of an ambiguous pattern,
the brain can only discern one of the two superposed signals. While
focused on the selected signal it is blind to the alternate state (AKA
the alternate construction, the alternate phenomenon, the alternate
reality). If prompted, it may see the alternate pattern, but as it
does so, it becomes blind to the previous pattern. If it views the
superposition pattern, then it sees neither sub-pattern while
entertaining the collective pattern. Of course, the brain can hop back
and forth rapidly for simple constructions but much more complex
signals may not be so easily "jumped out of."
Consider the Necker cube. If the figure is presented as completely
symmetrical, one usually sees a two-dimensional six-gon divided into
six similar triangles. It is possible for some people to see the
figure as a cube, but this usually requires a conscious attempt
(perhaps organized by the left hemisphere) to do so. A standard Necker
cube is however ambiguous (perhaps the right hemisphere's processing
is affected), whereby one usually sees a mock three-dimensional cube
in one of two possible orientations. When the brain first scans the
figure, it detects, prior to consciousness, the superposed states of A
and B, which is the flat state. The brain of a modern (habituated to
mass media imagery) reads the clues and ordinarily chooses either
orientation/state A or orientation/state B, thus collapsing the wave
function. The brain cannot see the alternate state until the previous
state has been suspended, implying that the brain for a short period
temporarily revives the superposition.
The Necker cube demonstrates that the brain constructs reality, though
when the data are sparse enough, the reality can be discerned as mock
or simply representational. In fact, one way the brain can discern
that the phenomenon isn't "real" or "serious" is by switching back and
forth between states.
A study by Jay Sanguinetti of perception of ambiguous black and white silhouettes shows that the brain may recognize a pattern, but reject it before it is consciously perceived.
World Science summary
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/131114_brain.htm
Sanguinetti showed study participants images of what appeared to be an abstract black object. Sometimes, however, there were real-world objects hidden at the borders of the black silhouette.
When neurons fire in a specific coordinated manner, detectors record a specific signal strongly correlated with pattern recognition. The "recognition" signal
occurs about 400 milliseconds after the image is shown (less than a half a second).
“The participants in our experiments don’t see those shapes on the outside; nonetheless, the brain signature tells us that they have processed the meaning of those shapes,” said Mary Peterson, a senior scientist at the University of Arizona who oversaw the study. “But the brain rejects them as interpretations, and if it rejects the shapes from conscious perception, then you won’t have any awareness of them.”
Closely related to this construction process is the notion of Gestalt.
When two subsignals superpose and are recognized as meaningful, we
call that cognition a Gestalt effect. The Gestalt reaction may be a
consequence of hardware or software functions.
In the case of the Necker cube, the Gestalt reaction ordinarily
doesn't stem from superposition of states A and B but from the
superposition of sub-signals that constitute perception A or
perception B.
As we know from internet programs designed to thwart automated access,
pattern recognition is not a simple matter. Suppose we have a (say
equilateral) triangle and draw two intersecting lines such that one
side is linked to two lines and each of the other sides is linked to
one line. A spontaneous identification of the numeral 4 is unlikely,
but if told that the figure contains a 4, the observer sees it by
deconstructing the figure and cognizing the appropriate subsignal
while defocusing the remaining signal. Again, we see that meaningful
(not mere noise) reality is constructed by the brain either by
decomposition of superposed signals or by the combining of signals
into a composite signal.
Interestingly, we may say that the figure we've described is composed
of two subsignals, but that only holds if there are templates for
those sub-signals. The 4 exists because it is a common visual signal
used in an important process known as counting. So it is with
superposition of more complex phenomenon signals.
Another example: take a collection of five stones each colored
differently and arrange them in a circle. How many ways can we arrange
this circular pattern? Let us name the colors as B,R,G,P,W and let B
be fixed relative to the others. With respect to B, there are 4! (24)
patterns. But, in a ring, there is no difference between a permutation
and its mirror image, and so the total number of patterns is 4!/2, or
12.
The fact that we get two numbers for the same set of stones, (n-1)!
and (n-1)!/2 is another illustration of the brain's imposition of
order on its input signals.
An important issue cited by Davies, Hoffman and others is sometimes
known as the phi effect, whereby the conscious brain discerns motion
that can only have been constructed by a pre-conscious processing
method. The phi effect is most obvious from video film, whereby the
brain interprets slightly different still images presented
sequentially as if the subsignals in the images represent moving
objects.
Hoffman relates experiments with four lights set at corners of a
square. At one time interval between flashes, if the lights are
flashed sequentially, the observer sees four dots traveling in
straight lines. At a shorter interval, the observer sees one
illuminated dot traveling in a circle.
Interestingly, the lights can be flashed in such a way that straight
line motions might head toward one source, but this interpretation is
rejected by the brain, which, says Hoffman, prefers "global coherence
of motion."
If stick figures of a symmetrical t and a symmetrical x are
alternately flashed at a sufficient rate, the observer sees a whirling
windmill.
Numerous experiments of this sort -- pioneered by Max Wertheimer in
1912 -- point to the brain's construction of a meaningful signal from
input clues.
We also have the remarkable and telling effect of masking, which
engineers deconstruction and forgetfulness of a pattern in order to
deal with a replacement pattern.
"It is possible to present stimuli to the brain subliminally
(unconsciously)," writes neuroscientist Joseph Le Doux (40). "This can
be done in a number of ways, but one commonly used is backwards
masking. In this procedure, an emotion-arousing visual stimulus is
flashed on a screen very briefly (for a few milliseconds) and is then
followed immediately by some neutral stimulus that stays on the screen
for several seconds. The second stimulus blanks out the first,
preventing it from entering conscious awareness (by preventing it from
entering working memory), but it does not prevent the first from
eliciting an emotional reaction (the stimulus changes the beating of
the heart or makes palms sweat). Since the stimulus never reaches
awareness (because it is blocked from working memory), the responses
must be based on unconscious processing of the meaning of the stimulus
rather than on the conscious experience of it. By short-circuiting the
stages necessary for the stimulus to reach consciousness, the masking
procedure reveals processes that go on outside of consciousness in the
human brain."
We see that an unconscious process chooses the phenomenon signal it
has a need to focus on. The brain requires some time interval in which
it determines whether a signal perceived by the "reptilian brain" is
to be incorporated into the conscious narrative.
In
About time, Davies writes that the "essence of phi shows up in
experiments in a darkened room where two small spots are briefly lit in
quick succession, at slightly different locations." The subjects saw
not two successively lit dots but a single dot moving back and forth.
Usually each dot is illuminated for 150 milliseconds followed by a
dark period of 50 milliseconds. "Evidently the brain somehow 'fills
in' the 50-millisecond gap. Presumably, this hallucination or
embellishment occurs after the event, because until the light flashes,
the subject cannot know the light is 'supposed' to move." (8)
In another experiment, the first spot is colored red and the other
green, Davies wrote. Subjects reported seeing the dot change color in
the middle of the imagined trajectory. So how does the subject
experience the correct color before the green spot lights up?
Plainly, a lag time permits the brain to cobble together signals into
a consciously perceived signal that "makes sense," in accordance with
some Darwinistic imperative.
Davies writes that Daniel Dennett (41) argued that the receiver system
initially only records the red spot and then the green spot but that
an "Orwellian in-built censor" rejects the initial reality and
constructs another, causing the observer to forget the initial
discrete observations.
We might add that for such basic percept or pre-percept signals, the
rules for organizing them into a meaningful signal are highly
time-dependent.
We may wonder about the mechanism for distinction between the
perception of the self as "behind the eyes" and the remainder of the
world as "out there." I don't have a good mechanistic answer as to
perception of qualia, or of self. (42)
But I would say that the feedback control system is not able to
monitor all of its interior elements, analagous to the results of
Goedel and Turing that show that a computer cannot compute a proof of
every true statement, that its circuitry must be in this sense be
incomplete.
Construction of reality occurs not only at basic levels but at all
levels (except perhaps at some metaphysical ultimate level). As Eric
Kandel (43) has noted, much post-behaviorist research verifies Freud's
basic point that many conscious perceptions and goals are driven by
unconscious goals.
On the borderline of perception, we see how the brain manufactures
phenomena which seem plausible. For example, when the ambient
noise level is high relative to a stray noise that doesn't quite fit, a person
may think he's heard his cellphone tone and reach to
look at it, only to find no incoming call or signal. This phenomenon can
occur even when there are no other cellphones nearby.
Clearly, the brain has fitted what it takes for a signal to the nearest
(mathematically) stored pattern and influenced the conscious to perceive it.
However, the executive function may alert the conscious to be wary
because of the fact that the purported signal is near the edge
of perceptible phenomena.
The malleability of individual reality is strongly underscored by Norman
Doidge, who has drawn attention to remarkable advances in
the study of neuroplasticity. (44)
G. William Farthing says such "automated" or "unwilled" activity is
explained or rationalized by the interpreter system, which formulates
a politically correct narrative expressed via conscious cognition.
Farthing notes that the interpreter explanations cannot be entirely
accurate because it cannot scan all the computational activities of
these "nonconscious modules" [whether they be hardware or software
programs]. (45)
Further, as work with brain-damaged patients shows, the interpreter
system is not limited to coming up with convincing, politically
correct stories to mask and repress from consciousness the infantile
or animalistic hidden agendas, it can also concoct reality streams
that explain anomalies linked to the disorder.
Farthing is far from alone when he insists that mental unity is an
illusion. "Our actions are not controlled by the executive system.
Most of them, including many complex cognitive acts, are products of
nonconscious modules." He adds that "our culturally instilled,
folk-psychological belief in conscious control of our actions is so
strong that when the left hemisphere interprets the behaviors elicited
by nonconscious modules, it typically interprets them as if they had
been consciously controlled." (46)
Steven Strogatz (47) tells of a 1999 study in which electrode-linked
subjects were shown "Mooney faces," ambiguous black-and-white images
that, viewed in one orientation, look like faces, but viewed "upside
down," are meaningless blobs. About a quarter second after a subject
scrutinized the image, the monitor displayed a number of "gamma
oscillations" caused by millions of neurons firing rhythmically at
around 40 Hertz in various cortex regions associated with visual
processing. These gamma oscillations occurred for subjects reporting a
face or a blob at the point when unconscious recognition occurred.
However, notes Strogatz, though the firings occurred in each case, the
degree of synchrony was radically different. Only when the "rightside
up" face was viewed did the electrical discharges align themselves in
farflung parts of the brain. Yet, before the subject pushed a button
to signify recognition of a familiar type of image, the synchrony
dissolved. Again, the brain is constructing a phenomenon signal from
the input data, which is why there needs to be a time lag prior to
consciousness.
Roger Shepard's "turning the tables illusion" catches the brain in the act of constructing reality. An image of two identical parallelogram tabletops accompanied by different visual cues fools the brain into seeing very different shapes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485780/
Gerd Gigerenzer remarks that "the perceptual system does not fall prey to illusory uncertainty -- our conscious experience does. The perceptual system analyzes incomplete and ambiguous information and 'sells' its best guess to conscious experience as a definite product" (47a).
The hallucinations of patients with Charles Bonnet syndrome are akin to lucid dreaming. They happen to people with damage in their visual processing system, as Oliver Sacks points out in his book Hallucinations. The hallucinations are so convincing that some patients are initially unaware that others don't see the apparitions. Often, however, the hallucinations are so bizarre that the patient is aware that his or her brain is acting peculiarly. For example, Sacks tells of a woman who observed a man in a striped shirt paying at a cash register. As she watched, the man "split into six or seven identical copies of himself, all wearing striped shirts, all making the same gestures -- then concertinaed back into a single person" (47b).
What is going on here? Clearly, the brain is constructing an alternate reality, evidently "filling in" as compensation for full or partial loss of vision or visual processing ability (the woman in this case had reduced blood flow in a part of the brain that processes visual imagery).
The murkiness of the concept of free will is driven home by V.S.
Ramachandran (48), who cites a study in which EEG-wired subjects were
instructed to wiggle a finger at any time of their own choosing within
a ten-minute period. Researchers found that 0.75 second before a
finger wiggled, the EEG recorded a "readiness potential," even though
each subject's conscious awareness of a decision to wiggle coincided
almost exactly with the actual wiggling.
From the foregoing, it would appear that there is no remedy for the
situation whereby one's thoughts contribute strongly to "wave function
collapse."
Dreams and altered states of consciousness
Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams gives the mechanisms of
repression, censorship, disguise and conflation. For Freud,
conflicting primal goals and emotion-laden life experiences are
thrashed out in symbolic form in order to help the brain attain some
sort of equilibrium, though in pathological cases the equilibrium is
not well attained. (51)
But why dream? Dreaming requires a type of consciousness that largely
leaves out left-brain activity and permits associations of symbols
based on primitive similarities. The stream of consciousness is not
nearly so smooth, and it is quite possible a laptop might vanish from
beneath one's fingers. A typical dream seems to reflect an infantile
or animalistic consciousness -- the way a baby actually interacts with
the world.
In fact a dream, like an internal fantasy or novel or Hollywood movie,
often seems to fill a need for vicarious reality. But why does a
person need a vicarious experience? It may stem from early man's need
to show others where the game was spotted. This vicarious reality is
essential to human speech, which mimics, to a limited degree the
brain's feedback controlled reality construction system.
Also, I suggest that the right brain, when representing its goals and
conflicts in a dream, is actually attempting to formulate a reality
scenario that meets its standards but lacks the left-brain's ability
to make narratives smooth and continuous, and so the dreams simply
stop abruptly. Such a dream state is in many ways similar to an
alcohol-induced blackout, whereby the left-brain (including, if you
like, the super-ego), is suppressed and the ego is permitted to live
riotously without supervision or restraint. Inability to remember what
occurred in a blackout is akin to the common inability to remember a
dream. Some alcoholics drink just a little before blacking out and
then consuming prodigious quantities of intoxicants. This permits the
Dr. Jekyll of the ego to be unsupervised by the Mr. Hyde of the
superego -- even after the fact.
So though a typical dream, from our perspective, doesn't seem to cause
the observer to interact with the external world, we see that a person
may be in a dream-like state and interact with the external world, as
we also know from other altered states of consciousness.
Except for very high E-magnitude dreams, forgetfulness of a dream and
its details is a function of alertness. Interestingly, I have found
that if I a wake up quickly and forget a dream, I can sometimes
recover the dream if I allow myself to soon return to a trance-like,
semi-conscious (right-brain dominated) state. The reason for the
amnesia seems to be that the brain doesn't want one reality stream to
conflict with the other; the organism wants no confusion occasioned by
blending of reality streams.
Of course, we have various levels of dream consciousness. My own
experiences suggest a near-blackout level -- partly because the
symbols fly so fast and are so disjoint and partial -- that seems to
result from illness or physical problems, to mid-level awareness
dreams that often occur sequentially and seem to be acting out the
same conflict, but with different symbols for each episode, to high-awareness dreams
close to the conscious state. Usually, the self is simply a passive
observer or passive participant, but if I am close to waking up I may
assert control and start directing the dream to some extent, as with a
fantasy. I am also able to fall asleep (lose left-brain consciousness)
by fantasizing, so that my "consciously controlled" fantasy merges
into a dream without the left-brain self in charge.
I well recall drifting into a state of semi-consciousness on a
long-haul bus and listening to a symphony orchestra play a very
interesting, creative piece. My brain was transforming the input of
the engine noise into something pleasant. I also found that I could
regulate this symphony to a limited degree with a left-brain
"conductor" -- as long as the "conductor" wasn't too alert, in which
case I would be cognizant of the engine noise. (51A)
In fact, hypnotic and hypnogogic states are routine occurrences, as
the psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson argued. Consider his controversial
method of introducing hypnotic states. He found that if he used
deliberate confusion -- or contradiction -- that the patient became,
as it were, frozen, which amounted to a low-intensity trance. For
example, in his handshake ploy, Erickson would make as if to shake the
patient's hand but then grab his wrist. We might say that the
executive agency that controls conscious focus becomes unable to
entertain two contradictory states and, in this case, the psychiatrist
uses the state-conflict to divert the executive and make it more
plastic, a situation which can be viewed as the beginnings of a
so-called trance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson
In the 19th century, hypnosis researcher Jules Dupotet de Sennevoy
discovered that subjects lost all sense of physical sensation,
including somatic pain. When affllicted with various tortures, there
was no response, but upon awakening, the residual pain prompted great
anger from the subjects. But during the hypnotic state, the mental
capacity was often acuter than during the ordinary waking state, he
found. Others have since confirmed this phenomenon, which shows that
the reality formation mechanism that we have posited is operating so
as to screen out somatic awareness.
Of course there is an extensive literature on hypnosis that strongly
affirms the role of mental processes in reality formation.
Pavlov argued that trances corresponded to gradations between the
fully alert awake state and sleep. We would add that in some trances
the left-brain reality constructor is limited while the right-brain
reality constructor rules. However, full conscious awareness is
limited, because left-brain cohesion routines tend to extend conscious
awareness. Such effects are routine when drifting off to sleep or
listening to music. In some subjects, such a state can be induced by a
hypnotist. Notice that a skilled hypnotist can manipulate a subject's
mind so that it creates an alternate reality and storyline. The
hypnotist's voice perhaps is perceived by the subject's mind, now in
an infantile state, as that of a parent.
The sleep-walker is mainly in a dream state but interacts with the
"external world" sufficiently to demonstrate the mind's ability to
construct its reality.
Similarly, psychotic episodes show that the brain constructs reality,
rather than merely observing it. The brain begins to misinterpret data
sets in such a way as to bring about dysfunction. However, one must
acknowledge that there are borderline cases in which one man's
paranoia is another man's reality. Conspiracies do exist. (52)
What of the world view accepted by a typical American? It is actually
a wild distortion of "reality." Propagandists and psychological
warfare experts operating through a limited media ensure this
situation.
The old saw about genius being akin to madness carries a kernel of
truth. The creatively inclined individual draws heavily from the
right-brain "lateral" connectivity programs (simple associations as
opposed to hierarchical associations) in order to obtain new ideas
(superpositions) for projects, while using the left-brain functions to
meta-organize the project. This unusual dependence on the right brain
corresponds with the right brain dominance of some cognitively
disordered mentally ill persons.
Intoxicants are a well-known source of reality distortion. A drug such
as LSD, through causing excessive firing of neurons, may yield visual
and auditory hallucinations or may stimulate a revision of the belief
system incorporated by the individual, with potentially dangerous
consequences. Again, we see that the brain concocts reality from raw
input data.
In the case of "cold turkey" withdrawal from alcohol or opiates, the
subject experiences vivid hallucinations, often in the form of
monsters or voices urging suicide. The goal of satisfaction of the
addictive need is so great as to strongly affect the functioning of
the reality construction mechanism. The organism's desire for suicide
stems from its need to end the crisis associated with its lack.
The sleep-deprived often see phantoms, such as a road-sign looking
like a person frantically waving his arms in warning. During sleep the
brain organizes the day's principle perception sets. In fact,
dreaming may be part of that
organization process. At any rate, energy is required to maintain a
highly-organized left-brain controlled reality narrative. When energy
levels are low, that mechanism works poorly.
Very significantly, those deprived of sensory stimulation for days on
end begin to construct reality narratives in which minor external
stimuli play a major role. The small stimulus is amplified with a set
of memory templates. In other words, lucid dreaming results. The brain
must "live life." Even low levels of boredom are, from a Darwinist
standpoint, counterproductive. The organism needs a rich variety of
experience, within smooth constraints; such variety tends to increase
chances for individual survival and group survival via hunting,
searching and procreativity.
Also, nearly every human needs interaction with other humans. The need
for positive approval is a stalwart of the "herd instinct." (We have
not discussed the qualitative notion of love. Though love is very
important, we would use an E-value, or set of E-values, associated
with a specific object or person, as sufficient for our limited
purposes.)
[We will have more to say on Freudian-style group dynamics versus
Jung's collective unconscious idea in the section on Jung and
synchronicity below.]
A prisoner may be held incommunicado in order to pressure him to
cooperate with an interrogator. Relief from boredom and the need for
human contact may boost the value of the interrogation session, the
captors hope. But such a captive is very likely to enter a dream world
and, his grasp of reality weakened, is at a disadvantage in defending
himself from telling interrogators what they want to hear, even if it
is objectively false. In fact, communist "brainwashing" of American
war prisoners -- today called "enhanced interrogation" -- was intended
to weaken the brain's reality formulator, thus making prisoners
compliant and easily guarded by a few soldiers and more amenable to
confessions of doubtful veracity.
Occasionally, the brain's reality constructor may show "minor" disjunctions.
Consider the "case of the missing sock."
When one places loose pairs of socks in a washer and dryer, the brain
anticipates that there will be chaotic, or effectively random, mixing
and tumbling. At any point, there is uncertainty as to the existence
of not only one sock, but the pair. There is a waveform for the pair
which is a superposition of the individuals. When this waveform
vanishes, there is "no guarantee" that a waveform for an individual
will emerge, especially in that socks have low priority and there is
no strong belief (the focus amplitude is low) that a particular
individual will "be there" later. That is, the reality formulator may
tend to lose a sock in the mixing process.
Yes, statistical arguments can be used to counter this suggested
scenario, but our model questions some of the assumptions of modern
probability theory, as discussed later. [Also see my paper
The many worlds of probability, reality and cognition linked in sidebar.]
The vanishing laptop example might seem extreme. But what of the time
you casually put down a cup of coffee in a cluttered room with no one
else present, turned to do something and then turned to get the
coffee, only to find the cup was nowhere in sight? Have you never had
such an experience? Perhaps you searched diligently and then found it in
some unexpected place, wondering, "How in the world did I manage
that?" but then shrugged off the little mystery. Possibly you searched the
entire room diligently but didn't find it. Either you accept that something spooky
has happened or you believe you have forgotten leaving the room with
the cup in hand.
We suggest that sometimes routine psychological errors run a bit
deeper, into the reality formulation area. The change of focus may
mask a particular anticipated signal; perhaps when you changed focus
you caused a glitch in the signal decomposition procedure. When you
turn back, the cup signal isn't decoded; its "wave function hasn't
collapsed."
On occasion, such an inexplicable event (or non-event, really) might
be related to how your mind is interacting with someone else's, even
if you don't "see" them in your "materialist" virtual reality state.
Group reality construction
We can see group minds at work on the internet, perhaps using network
theory to give a partial description. The evolution of civilization
and its group mind, with its many sub group minds, is like the
evolution of an organism continually changing -- sometimes
regressively, as in the Dark Ages -- and replenishing itself.
We see from political and economic life that this mind is indeed
unconscious (though elites try to manipulate and control it) -- which
is to say, irrational. This description, perhaps based in Freudian
group dynamics, accepts a conventional mechanistic worldview, with all
inter-mind activity mediated by the senses.
However, from a Jungian perspective, the stated existence of
paranormal phenomena implies a connectivity that bypasses the ordinary
sensory system.
The model we have been urging suggests that the sensory system is not
part of a simple decoder, but is also part of the individual reality
formulator. How does an individual's reality formulator interact with
those of his or her fellows, or that is, if an individual dreams his
own dream during awake life, how would this comport with the
dream-construction of his fellows?
Consider the multiplexing examples above. Different-language messages
can intersect and potentially yield meaningful, if noisy, combination
messages. Also, a translator program can link two worldviews that are
disjoint in many respects but share enough in common so that a
"good-enough" function exists between the two.
Consider an English speaker carrying on a radio conversation with a
German-speaker through an interpreter; if the interpreter is
relatively fast, neither the English speaker nor the German speaker
need know that the entire conversation isn't being conducted in one
language; neither need know that he is speaking to a foreigner.
Similarly, a person living in "virtual world A" might interact with
someone in "virtual world B" with each unaware of the other's world.
To use a silly example, perhaps Lancelot in King Arthur's court is
wooing Guinevere, without realizing Guinevere is Britney Spears who is
having boyfriend issues. Britney has no clue that Lance is in another
realm altogether.
Yes, we commonly say of someone that "he's in another world." The
point here is the extent of that possibility.
But because of the feedback system of each mind/node, our model then
implies communal virtual reality. This communal reality is continually
changing, much like weather and climate systems. Such a communal
reality can be viewed as the intersection of individual reality
streams. But this group reality needn't be and probably isn't the
background reality of the cosmos. This group reality would correspond
more to Jung's notion of a collective unconscious, but in no way
disputes the Freudian notion of the group mind. The Freudian group
mind tends to be elemental and, in totality, irrational and subject to
manipulation of experts in crowd psychology, but it is said to operate
via the usual senses. The Jungian collective unconscious is a linkage
of minds on some non-material plane that contains ancient knowledge.
(I would never consider myself a Jungian, but I think it important to
place my model within a historical perspective.)
I have had numerous personal experiences that suggest some sort of
covert linkage among minds, but I won't dwell on them, except to point
out that very occasionally I will have a dream in which I wake up
thinking that one of the dream people actually represents someone
else's mind. I believe this because the qualitative feel of the
emotions of the dream figure "aren't mine," but are I suspect those of
someone known to me. That mind is invariably in Freudian disguise.
Yes, I am aware that one often doesn't apprehend one's own unconscious
feelings; yet I believe that I am fairly familiar with their routine
qualia. When those qualia differ substantially from those with which I
am familiar, then I suspect that the signal hasn't been generated
entirely internally.
To me, this accords with the idea that each brain influences the
signal processing of the other in ways that transcend and indeed
bypass the sensory systems.
The researcher Dupotet found that hypnotized subjects seemed to be
able to see through opaque objects and "appear endowed with a
knowledge beyond that which they ordinarily possess, are able to
diagnose illnesses and prescribe effective treatments and even
foretell future events in exacting detail." Of course this observation
was met with scientific derision. In popular culture, hypnotism and
spiritism became interlinked and a fad that still continues.
But, is there something to Dupotet's finding? That is, is it not
plausible that the subject's reality constructor is working at a
"different level" and intersecting with the hypnotist's reality
constructor to produce such effects?
Such "back-channel" communication is often ascribed to the spirit
world, whereby a dreamer may interact with a spirit other than his
own. But then of course we are left with the problem of defining
spirit. The assumption is that such entities are non-material and can
neither be confirmed nor denied and are hence of no relevance to
science.
I am not about to define spirit any more than I am ready to define
consciousness. However, I would say that the assumption that
non-material links are impossible is directly contradicted by
relativity theory and quantum mechanics.
Deja vu is sometimes ascribed to this supposed spirit realm. Recent
research shows that the deja vu perception can be induced . A pattern
is flashed so briefly that a subject grasps it only unconsciously.
When the pattern is shown at a longer interval, the subject often has
a feeling of having seen it before but can't pin down the memory.
We would say that on occasion a reality stream signal contains a
superposition of two relatively complex subsignals. The superposition
has its own Gestalt. But so does one of the subsignals; however, the
larger pattern blocks from conscious perception the subsidiary
pattern.
But non-routine deja vu might occur if a person has somehow changed
virtual worlds. The former virtual world is blocked from working
memory, but a part of the brain recognizes it.
We would say that closely related to the deja vu experience is
meaningful coincidence, whether serial or simultaneous. What we have
is several subsignals that interfere at time A that go to constitute
part of the overall reality signal at time B. This always happens. But
sometimes the subsignals cohere sufficiently so that at the "collapse
of the wave function" at time B, they form "meaningful" pairs or sets.
The observer sees one or more "echoes" of time A events at one or more
future times, though my experience is that these future times tend to
be within 24 hours.
Following Von Neumann, we say that the wave function collapses only
upon observation by a conscious mind, though the degree and type of
consciousness may vary sufficiently so that wave functions don't
decompose very predictably.
To use a relevant analogy, consider a simple taut string fixed between
two walls. Pluck the string at end A and a moment later at end B and
two traveling wave forms are set off. These wave forms are discrete
until they pass through each other. Once they are fully superposed the
brain cannot discern directly either wave form. It must wait until the
waves have continued on before they can be viewed as individuals. So
it is with reality subsignals. However, because the reality subsignals
are often very rich, they can be decomposed in numerous ways.
Randomness, probability and coincidence
Randomness is a description of information. When do we consider an
event or observation to be random?
In a classical sense, we can model an event with a set of force
vectors. Some events have fairly large sets of force vectors, many of
which have low magnitude. The vector sum -- the cumulative vector --
predicts the next state of the observation.
However, quite a few of these low-magnitude vectors can't be observed.
We can say that empirically we have learned that the very small
vectors tend to cancel out. In some cases, a small vector represents a
"tipping point" that changes the vector sum in a drastic way. For
example, during the toss of a fair coin, some small vector determines
whether the coin lands head or tail. Over many trials, these small
vectors tend to cancel, yielding the "law of large numbers."
So here the concept of random is related to our knowledge of small
forces. We can't sum those forces exactly for one event, but we can
assess that the small forces vary so little that there is no way to be
certain what the next outcome will be.
Essentially then, an outlier event is either the result of a
measurement error or the result of a set of small forces becoming
coherent, thus amplifying their effect rather than canceling or
reducing their effect.
At the quantum level, the probability amplitude is what we can know
about the "collapse of the wave function." We cannot predict exactly
where the collapse will occur and a particle's impact will be
recorded. There seem to be no hidden physical forces that are
influencing the outcome. Within constraints, the outcome is
non-deterministically or acausally random. I strongly suspect that the
collapse is a result of how the brain processes data at a very basic
level.
It seems plausible that if the focusing unit is neutral about
outcomes, the results are deterministically random, the determinants
being within the unit's reality builder software. But this is an
insufficient explanation, and in fact, I agree with Penrose that
progress in physics, physiology and psychology requires extensive
research into this interface.
The word "coincidence" is taken from Euclidean geometry, whereby two
line segments intersect over some finite interval. More generally, we
deem two events as coincidental if they have something in common, if
they intersect. If the number of elements of the intersection is
"high," we may say the coincidence is non-random, but is causally
related, perhaps reasoning that the information content of the
intersection is so high as to represent error-correction activity.
However, because many small forces can occasionally cohere into a
large vector, rather than canceling out, we are unsure whether this
coincidence has a causal relation or whether it represents an outlier.
Hence the need to run a number of trials.
So the coincident events of a boy meeting a girl he knows at the
supermarket may be a result of various unmeasured forces and be held
as essentially random, even though the girl suspects not. But, if
these types of meetings occur repeatedly over a short duration, the
girl will almost certainly be correct to assume he is interested in
her.
Also, often "meaningful coincidences" are to be expected without there
being any macro-connecting cause or force. Such coincidences are
counterintuitive to many people and so they believe that some large
mystery force is at work. The birthday problem is a good example of
this. If you enter a classroom of more than 23 people whose birthdays
are unknown to you, the chance is better than 50 percent that someone
shares your birthday. That probability climbs rapidly with number.
Another example is the "hidden hand" of a free market not controlled
by cartels. There is no central organizing force, but we get the
impression one exists because micro-actions can and often do cohere
into a substantial "net force vector."
In a light-hearted vein, Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird (53)
dismiss the idea that a "cosmic conspiracy" might account for
similarities such as these:
- Lincoln and Kennedy were both shot to death
- Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846
- Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946
- Lincoln was elected president in 1860
- Kennedy was elected president in 1960
- Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy
- Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln
- Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808
- Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908
- John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839
- Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939
Burger and Starbird argue that "Lincoln and Kennedy were not average
citizens. The pile of minutiae through which to forage is truly
immense." And so "how likely is it that there are no coincidences of
dates and names in any of this blizzard of possibilities?" Their
answer: "Essentially zero."
John Allen Paulos has argued similarly about various coincidences
concerning 9/11, in particular concerning the numerals themselves
(Google his home page for a link to that article).
If one accepts the philosophical underpinning of probability theory, one
can see the point of view of these writers. However, some of these
pairings might indeed fall into the realm of "meaningful coincidence"
and represent coherence of reality construction wave forms as shared
among a large group.
P.T. Barnum was preoccupied with the number 13, which he held to be
unlucky (54). The superstition associated with the number doubtless
influenced his suspicion of it, which was reinforced after two fires.
The first destroyed his American Museum on July 13 and the second his
Barnum Museum on Nov. 13.
From the perspective of routine probability theory, these coincidental
events do not portend a mysterious connection. The probability of two
consecutive fires can't be estimated; no doubt many combustibles were
kept within and the many visitors would have drastically increased the
chance of accidental combustion. The probability of "the same" event
occurring on the 13th is about (1/30)
2, which is low, but a significance
analysis would show nothing surprising.
Of course there are various ways to estimate the likelihood of
randomness. But even if the probability were very low, because there
are only two events, one cannot rule out a fluke outlier.
One way to address "remarkable chunks of order" is with Ramsey theory,
an area of discrete mathematics aimed at finding what conditions are
necessary for a minimum amount of order to appear. The simplest
example is the pigeonhole principle. If there are m pigeonholes and n
> m letters, then at least one pigeonhole contains at least two
letters. If m is much smaller than n, two or more letters share one
slot only infrequently, and so we might be struck by the "remarkable
coincidence" of the association of these two letters. Elaborations on
this concept occur in network theory, and it has been proved that for
minimum numbers of links and nodes subregions must have higher
information content than the average for network subregions.
The pigeonhole example shows how important the question is in standard
probability analysis. Suppose you walk into a large room with a bank
of 1,000 pigeonholes, having been told that the rule is that each slot
must have at least one letter. Now you walk along and behold! there is
a slot with two letters and you see no other slot that contains a
pair. You may say what are the chances of such a pair? But as long as
there are at least 1,001 letters, there is a 100 percent probability
of such a pair existing, though that pair's slot would hold (assuming
equivalent average content), double the information of a typical slot.
Now if you were standing outside the room, your chance of guessing the
number of the slot with the high information is then 10
(-3).
A discussion of randomness shouldn't ignore the issue of deterministic
constraints on predictability. We may have an algorithm whose final
outcome cannot be computed, as far as is known, by some shortcut
method. The work of predicting the nth value rises with n. The work
for computationally difficult problems rises exponentially, versus
polynomially for many other problems.
We can say that as n rises, the noise rises with it, so that after
some m steps, the noise equals or exceeds the signal. In that case,
the nth value is effectively random, within whatever constraints there
are.
Completely chaotic systems likewise are effectively random within
specified ranges. Periodicity vanishes, and yet periodicity is the key
to nearly all forms of prediction. However, in the march toward chaos,
sometimes there are transient intervals of near-periodicity. These
islands of near-periodicity might, depending on the circumstances,
look like strange coincidences but in fact are diverging
from periodicity until chaos is attained.
Systems "far from equilibrium" may yield counterintuitive effects, as
when transient periods of order disrupt the general trend of
increasing entropy, as discussed by such researchers as Prigogine,
Kaufmann and Strogatz (55). Sometimes such "spontaneous order" is cast
in terms of wave entrainment, whereby a high-amplitude wave form
sometimes tends to bring low-amplitude wave forms into phase, or at
least into near phase.
As Stephen Wolfram (55a) and others have noticed, algorithms with a few simple rules
may, occasionally, yield high information results, though most rule
sets yield low-information results.
Arthur Koestler's
Roots of Coincidence (56) uses probability arguments
in order to help the general reader make sense of J.B. Rhine's work.
However, Koestler fails to note that Paul Kammerer's alleged "law of
seriality" (occurrence of strikingly similar events) must take into
account that randomness implies clustering.
For example, consider a sequence of 16 tosses of a fair coin. If the
alternating pattern HTHT... occurs, a runs test of randomness gives a
normal curve z score equivalent to less than 1 percent. That is, we
would not be confident of randomness. So then, in a run of n >= 16
tosses, the probability of clustering (several heads or tails
consecutively) is greater than 99%.
Even so, it is possible to detect apparent non-random clustering.
Consider a fair coin tossed 20 times. The probability of 12 heads and
8 tails is 20C8(0.520), which is about 12%. We would not feel terribly
confident in ruling out randomness. However, the probability of
obtaining 12 heads and 8 tails in the order 2 tails followed by 10
heads followed by 6 tails, when assessed by a runs test, gives a
normal curve z score of 3.49, which is equivalent to a confidence level of
non-random influence of 99.98%.
A one-to-one match of elements from two sets (or an intersection) can
be seen as a coincidence. For example, consider the sets
{A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K} and
{A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K}.
What is the probability that, on scrambling say the first set that two
letters of the same type will be found in the same position (lined
up)? A probability theorem tells us that for any n greater than 10,
the answer is about 63%. That is, the probability closely
approximates
1 - e
(-1), or 0.63. You may not think this unremarkable, but if the
set elements carried high E-values, in that case such a match might
strike you as a bizarre coincidence.
So, when struck by the seeming unusualness of coincidence of
occurrences, one must take into account that there are various
"non-paranormal" explanations that can be used.
And it must be admitted that much writing on supposedly significant
coincidences is intended for the Fate magazine set (57), lacks
intellectual value and unfortunately tends to undermine the work of
serious inquirers into paranormal phenomena, such as nobelist Brian
Josephson.
The probabilistic framework adopted by many scientists rests on some
important assumptions:
So a "strong virtual reality" view of perception would mean that
calculation of probabilities is an acceptable way to estimate
outcomes, but that beyond this is the occurrence of "upper hierarchy"
subsignals that recur within some interval. Barnum's predisposition to
worry about the number 13 could have influenced future events in his
life. Of course, there is always the possibility of Freudian-style
unconscious sabotage whereby one "accidentally" knocks over a lamp
twice running. But we are talking about something more, the mind
having a strong influence on the "fabric of reality."
Jung, Koestler and synchronicity
A number of physicists have toyed with the notion that mystical, or
even, paranormal phenomena are related to quantum weirdness.
Non-physicists Carl Jung and Arthur Koestler are two writers who have
pondered this idea in their discussions of synchronicity, which Jung
defined as the conjunction of "meaningful, acausal coincidences."
Of course these writers, lacking a mathematical orientation, are
dismissed by the bulk of scientists. "Flapdoodle," said Nobelist
Murray Gell-Mann of Koestlerian ideas (though later in his book The
Quark and the Jaguar, Gell-Mann mentions the notion of "goblin worlds." (58)
Gell-Mann was the motive force behind the Santa Fe Institute, whose
mission was to provide scientific alternatives to arguments for
"intelligent design."
John G. Taylor (59), a mathematician with a background in quantum
mechanics, had this to say: "Arthur Koestler argued in his book The
Roots of Coincidence (56) that, because quantum mechanics seems to have
these bizarre features associated with the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky
experiment and the Schroedinger cat paradox, that therefore other
bizarre phenomena can also occur in the world. This is, I think, a
very dangerous, specious argument."
John Archibald Wheeler recounted that in 1979 he strongly objected to
sharing an American Association for the Advancement of Science podium
with several parapsychologists, characterizing that field as
pseudoscience (4).
While true that neither Jung nor Koestler had a specific idea of how
such an interface might occur, they did have the statements of people
like Wolfgang Pauli and Pascual Jordan they could cite in their favor.
We must accept however that Koestler wrote like the skilled
journalist and thoughtful person he was but could not be said to have
presented a serious scientific case for synchronicity or so-called
paranormal pheonomena, other than by recapitulating some of the
results of J.B. Rhine. Essentially, his point was indeed that if
quantum weirdness operates in the world, then why shouldn't paranormal
weirdness also occur? His ideas about "holons" (biological parts
roughly equivalent to semi-autonomous states in a federal system) seem
to reflect some of Lynn Margolis' thinking on symbiosis versus
competition; such activity, Koestler thought, might account for extra-
or quasi-sensory perception.
Physicist F. David Peat (60) has argued in favor of a
quantum explanation of synchronicity. In fact, a number of the ideas
in this paper were stimulated by Peat.
Jung developed his synchronicity idea beyond "meaningful coincidences"
to include paranormal phenomena in general. He argued that such
peculiarities cannot be dismissed as simple subjective mental
aberrations, but require a non-Euclidean spacetime continuum, pointing
out that Jordan, a founder of quantum mechanics, had advocated the
"idea of relativistic space to explain telepathic phenomena." (61)
In 1930, Jung wrote that perhaps time, far from being an abstraction,
was a "concrete continuum" that helps account for "acausal
parallelism, such as we find, for instance, in the simultaneous
occurrence of identical thoughts, symbols and psychic states." (62) A
Jung biographer, Ronald Hayman, writes that Pauli, who for a time was
Jung's patient, had originally come up with the idea, though he did
not use the word "synchronicity" (62). In 1951, Jung and Pauli published
jointly two separate papers on synchronicity.(63),(64) [See first item
in Appendix A for an interesting account of the "Pauli effect."]
Koestler wrote that a number of eminent physicists had shown interest
in psychic phenomena. An early member of the British Society for
Psychical Research was Joseph J. Thompson, discoverer of the electron, said
Koestler (65). A middle-aged Werner Heisenberg subscribed to a
multi-layered view of reality as propounded by Goethe, writes
Heisenberg's biographer, David Cassidy (66). The nine layers of reality
-- accidental, mechanical, physical, chemical, organic, psychic,
ethical, religious and "genial" -- are rungs on a ladder that shift
from the objective to the subjective. While placing quantum physics
just below the organic level in the realm of the chemical, Heisenberg
believed that in order to comprehend the "grand connections" one must
climb the ladder of realities.
Heisenberg, wrote Cassidy, believed that the war reflected "movements
in the foundations of human thought" -- a shifting of the layers of
reality over the heads of individuals in such a way that "dark demons"
loosed on the world took on a greater role than in the past. He saw
Nazism and Bolshevism as a "strange sort" of "worldly religion."
A typical scientist might well respond that this sort of speculation
demonstrates that philosophy is best left to philosophers, and yet we
are left with the impression that still another important physicist
senses a connection between quantum issues and so-called occult
phenomena.
When discussing "meaningful coincidences," we should take care to
distinguish between Freudian-style free-association coincidences and
the synchronicity postulate of Jung. For example, in The
Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud (67) observes that a young man's
forgetfulness of a phrase reflected an unsconscious conflict
concerning a girlfriend who had missed her period. This conflict
surfaced in a string of thoughts expressed during a free-association
test. Freud argued that the apparent correlation between this set of
ideas and worry over the former companion's potential pregnancy was
not haphazard coincidence.
However, though this distinction is important, we must leave room for
the possibility of a merger between such unconscious conflicts and
synchronicity events. In fact, our model of perception actually
predicts that such mergers will be rather routine.
Both Jung and Koestler were influenced by Paul Kammerer, who published
a book of carefully chronicled "meaningful coincidences." (68) Kammerer,
reports Koestler, regarded "random coincidence" as a false
representation and that actually there is a universal, but mostly
unnoticed except in unusual cases, "recurrence of identical or similar
data in contiguous areas of space or time." Kammerer regarded this
"simple empirical fact" as furthering his arguments in favor of
Lamarckism, the rival theory of Darwinism that says that heredity is
influenced by the specific behaviors of parents. (69)
Kammerer posited a "law of seriality" that ensures that "acausally
related" events stream together. Koestler notes that the chief
difference between Kammerer and Jung is that Jung is more concerned
with serial events and Jung with simultaneous events. In fact, Jung
seems to have expanded on the idea of synchronicity to cover
paranormal phenomena in general. Synchronicity is to him a linchpin of
the collective unconscious, that vast storehouse of archetypes
(symbols common to humankind throughout history).
Kammerer's credibility is however at issue. He committed suicide in
1926 after his specimen that supposedly bolstered Lamarckism was
exposed as having been doctored, though Koestler argued that Nazis or
Nazi-types sabotaged the sample as a means of discrediting Kammerer's
socialist views.
Both Jung and Koestler cited the work of J.B. Rhine and Rhine's
successor, physicist Helmut Schmidt, in support of their ideas. More
recently, Josephson has cited telepathy studies and argued that unfair
methods have been used to discredit their value.
Freud considered most reports of telepathy to lack credibility. But, on the other hand, a few reports could not be easily dismissed. He suggested that telepathy is an archaic form of communication later supplanted by the more useful verbal form, though he did not propose any biological mechanism for this phenomenon.
For more on this, see my post Freud and Telepathy at
http://randompaulr.blogspot.com/2013/10/freud-on-telepathy.html
As Leonard Mlodinow (70) points out, if a telepathy test is given to a
number of people, it would be expected that at least one person would
do well enough to vary substantially from the mean. However, I would
add that if that same individual repeated such a "fluke" with more
than one trial set, then one would strongly suspect a non-random force
was at work.
(Again, in our model, randomness is in part a consequence of the
aperiodicity of the rich composite reality signal or subsignals. The
computational difficulty of predicting a specific subsignal is, like
weather prediction, of a high order. What this has to do with the
"true randomness" of particle detection is a subject in need of
considerably more work.)
Jung commented that in one Rhine study, subjects did well on the
initial trial, when they were interested in what was going on, but
afterward their returns were no better than random. I don't have the
Rhine study at hand and so I cannot say whether the initial variance
was statistically reasonable. However, based on our model, we would
say that a subject's reality construction is heavily dependent on
focus. In our scenario, a high level of belief might affect outcome.
I well recollect the day that I reached a friend via cellphone, having
been momentarily convinced that I had rung up the correct number. As
he was answering his only home phone, I suddenly realized I had dialed
the wrong number -- and the connection became weak in phase with my
doubt. After breaking contact, I checked carefully and found that I
had indeed dialed a wrong number. I hasten to add that usually when I
make a mistake, convinced or not, nothing atypical happens.
[See Appendix A for an anecdotal collection of strange events.]
Of course some of Jung's synchronicities are quite easily dismissed as
typical of randomness, such as his observation of "surnames that fit"
a person's vocation or disposition. That said, how does one account --
assuming Jung's truthfulness -- for his "fish story"?
In his Synchronicity paper, Jung noted that on April 1, 1949, a
Friday, "we had fish for lunch" and someone mentioned the custom of
"making an 'April fish' of someone." That morning, he had made a note
of an inscription reading "Est homo totus medius piscis ab imo." That
afternoon, a former patient, who he hadn't seen in months, showed him
"extremely impressive" pictures of fish that she had painted since
he'd last seen her. In the evening, "I was shown a piece of embroidery
with fish-like sea monsters on it" and the following morning another
patient, whom he hadn't seen for years, told of a dream in which she
stood on the shore of a lake and saw a large fish that swam straight
toward her and landed at her feet." (63)
True, one might argue that, because he is seeking associations, he is
noticing associations that occur routinely but tend to go unnoticed by
most people who have learned, correctly, to relegate such pairings to
"background noise." But it is relevant from our viewpoint that at the
time "I was engaged in the study of the fish symbol in history." The
focus on fish patterns influenced his reality construction, is how we
would put it.
To drive home that point, we cite this footnote by Jung: "As a pendant
to what I have said above, I should liken to mention that I wrote
these lines sitting by the lake. Just as I finished this sentence, I
walked over to the sea wall and there lay a dead fish, about a foot
long, apparently uninjured..."
Jung credits the astronomer Camille Flammarion with this anecdote (71):
"A certain M. Deschamps, when a boy in Orleans, was once given a piece
of plum pudding by a M. de Fortgibu. Ten years later he discovered
another plum pudding in a Paris restaurant and asked if he could have
a piece. It turned out, however, that the plum pudding was already
ordered -- by M. de Fortgibu. Many years afterwards M. Deschamps was
invited to partake of a plum pudding as a special rarity. While he was
eating it he remarked that the only thing lacking was M. de Fortgibu.
At that moment the door opened and an old, old man in the late stages
of disorientation walked in: M. de Fortgibu, who had got hold of the
wrong address and burst in on the party by mistake."
Though this story can't be verified, it is illustrative of "common
knowledge." Many people have experienced "synchronicities" of this
sort, sometimes equally dramatic. However, such happenings are usually
relegated to private life and "laughed off."
Jung's journey in psychology was from the beginning interwoven with a
keen interest in paranormal phenomena, which he tried to explain in
terms of deep forces to which the individual's unconscious was
connected. "Ghost stories and spirit-like phenomena practically never
prove what they seem to," he wrote in a 1950 note (72). "They provide
information about things the layman knows nothing of, such as the
exteriorization of unconscious processes." (My emphasis.)
Jung's observations led him to believe that bizarre occurrences appear
to be projections of unconscious forces within an affected individual.
What we have been saying is that bizarre occurrences may indeed point
to mental activity, but that the perception-phenomenon feedback
mechanism applies to all detected events.
There are a number of types of events that go under the heading
paranormal phenomena. I make no effort to list them all, though I
would say that we are talking about some type of non-material medium
that links minds. Individual reality construction is heavily
influenced by the reality weaving of other minds, so that no
individual has control of his or her own mind or reality flow.
Various religious systems recognize this "below-the-radar"
connectivity but that does not imply that a specific system is
particularly helpful to the individual. Superstition has an impact on
reality formation. If a person is taught to believe -- even partly --
a particular superstition, a person's reality formulator may warp in
some "bad luck event" in the near future. In this regard, consider the
remarkable discovery that an asteroid, Apophis, has been discovered
that is expected to make a very close flyby on April 13th, 2029, a
Friday, where it will pass to within 5 Earth diameters of us (below
the altitude of geosynchronous satellites). The exact path the
asteroid follows on its flyby in 2029 will determine whether it
smashes into the Earth seven years later -- on April 13, 2036, another
Friday.
Modern American popular culture, of course, has taken up the notion
that Friday the 13th is a bad luck day. And, there has been greatly
increased awareness of the possibility of an asteroid strike,
stimulated by a number of films. So shall we assume that the Friday the 13th dates stem from routine
statistical coincidence, or is it possible that popular fears and
expectations have somehow been projected to weave mass fantasies and
fears into a dreamscape that "solidifies" into "concrete reality"?
(My personal theological views are found at
http://paulpages.blogspot.com/2011/11/where-is-zion-many-wonder-about.html .)
Consider the word "enchantment." The root is the word "chant." It seems
plausible that chanting could influence an individual or communal
dreamweaver by the wave entrainment effect. Smaller signals tend to
fall in line and the later reality signal has a high degree of
coherence. The word is associated with magic spells (as in
incantation) and with modern rhythmic music. It could well be that not
only can a musical number put one into a trance-like reverie, but
actually alter the output reality signal.
Recall the traditional Irish bards, who were not only poets but
considered to be powerful magicians (although that element was played
down after Catholicism took hold).
The placebo effect has been thoroughly documented and some scientists
might hold that some miraculous cures are a close cousin of that
effect. I would agree that the power of belief can strongly affect an
individual's recovery. But I would add that if another mind is sharing
with the patient that belief, the joint reality formulation may be
stronger (or weaker). Yet who has the kind of belief that makes the
lame leap and the blind see? Who has the power of belief to raise the
dead?
Such biblical feats are often seen as nothing more than comic book
stuff. But, if consciousness interacts with a dreamlike signal, then
such story changes aren't impossible. However, they would require a
level of belief that many would consider superhuman.
Sometimes knowledge of reality reformulation is not beneficial.
Individuals may have learned various manipulations to adversely affect
the reality streams of others, though this would tend to imply that
their own reality stream would be likewise adversely affected.
And aside from such manipulators, there are also the charlatans and
confidence tricksters who are adept at deceiving people via ordinary,
sense-moderated illusions and delusions.
At any rate, the ideas stated above are meant to indicate a much more
malleable form of reality than previously held in science and are not
meant to lure the unwary into treacherous territory.
