In 1929, Niels Bohr,
in
what he admitted was perhaps a rush of enthusiasm for the new
science, speculated that perhaps the quantum understanding of
physical reality might also apply to an understanding of the mind and
consciousness. Maybe as analogy but perhaps, he suspected, as
something more. In effect, Bohr suggested that any effort to apply
thought to perception – of the subject apprehending the object –
collapsed a continuous wave function. When we use language to
describe something – whether it be internal or external – we were
extracting some possibilities out of a number of ways to do so,
indeed from a continuously variable flow. Recent investigations (as
reported in Science
News) into apparently illogical thought – decisions or
judgements that flout the basic mathematical logic of if A=X and B=X,
then A=B – suggest the possibility that quantum logic in which
something can be both particle and wave at the same time may apply.
The situations examined violated the “sure thing” rule.
One well-known example involved asking students whether they would
buy a ticket for a Hawaii vacation in three different situations:
They had passed a big test, they had failed the test, or they didn’t
yet know whether they had passed or failed. More than half said they
would buy the ticket if they had passed. Even more said they would
buy the ticket if they failed. But 30 percent said they wouldn’t
buy a ticket until they found out whether they had passed or failed.
It seems odd that people would decide to buy right away if they
knew the outcome of the test, no matter what it was, but hesitated
when the outcome was unknown. Such behavior violated a statistical
maxim known as the “sure thing principle.” Basically, it says
that if you prefer X if A is true, and you prefer X if A isn’t
true, then you should prefer X whether A is true or not. So it
shouldn’t matter whether you know if A is true. That seems logical,
but it’s not always how people behave.
The
researchers found that context is important and that quantum logic
may better explain such behavior. We make decisions within a
framework that allows possibilities that are logically the same to
interfere with each other as quantum waves might. Uncertainty seems
to leave us both particle and wave.
This
is deep. But the essential bit seems to be that the conscious
observer necessary to turn quantum reality into the classical reality
we live in – by observing and thereby collapsing the wave function
– also may operate in the same quantum/relativistic manner. If the
brain
is organically based and
operates as a classical system, perhaps the mind – brain/nervous
system plus
consciousness – acts as a quantum system in which perceived
reality is constructed through collapsing the wave functions
apprehended from the perceptual flow. (Some
of us “collapse” more readily than others: judgers vs
perceivers?) Now, whether
consciousness itself is a quantum-derived property of the physical
brain – perhaps arising at the nano-level – or a “ghost in the
machine” would remain a question. But the first possibility –
that consciousness arises within and
from a physical system that
demands consciousness to operate – would seem to violate
Gödel's
incompleteness theorem.