Comments on: A review of Henry Stapp’s Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer

By: doug seyfried

doug seyfried — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:10:23 +0000

I really enjoyed this book. The points are made clearly and fit with my knowledge of neuroscience as well as my everyday experience.
In many ways this is the best physics book I’ve read (and I’ve read too many).

By: Alberto

Alberto — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:12:15 +0000

To a layman like myself,it seems to be nothing less than preposterous the notion of classical physics that chooses to ignore the role of the “human agent” (consciousness) in physics.
I admire and thank people like Dr. Stapp for making the ideas of quantum physics more accesible to people like me,and for his incursions into neurosciences,that are necessary for the effort to explain the mind-brain interaction.

By: Brian Flanagan

Brian Flanagan — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:54:32 +0000

“Mr. Flanagan has been pushing this quantum consciousness stuff even longer than Stapp has.”

Stapp preceded me, as Lockwood and I preceded Penrose.

As to neuroscience, the community’s response to the quantum-mind thesis has been akin to that of lazy students who want to know if this will be on the test.

Koch has written that classical neurons have a wealth of state spaces to offer for anchoring sensory variables — though he doesn’t offer any explicit candidates. Yet, in the same breath, he admits that brains must operate on the quantum plain.

So… the brain is quantum, but the mind is classical. Uh huh.

Koch and Co. might want to look at Dyson’s old SciAm article on “Field Theory,” wherein Dyson points out that classical fields just are large quantum fields.

In another article in Nature, Koch and Crick argued that physics can’t help us understand mind & brain because physics is rigid, whereas biology is flexible. So… when the brain takes a left turn, it does so by ignoring physics? Or what? (Ironic, that Crick should have helped discover a physical mechanism underlying the profusion of living — and often quite complex — things.)

It is a sad reflection on Nature and the scientific community as a whole that Crick and Koch should get so much air time for arguments that do not stand the slightest scrutiny — for the simple reason that they have big names.

The fact is that the paradigm has shifted and there’s no going back. Those intent on fighting rearguard actions are advised to do what they can to catch up — or, at a minimum, come up with less flimsy excuses for their willful ignorance.

By: whit

whit — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:37:48 +0000

Where Stapp’s previous work gets interesting is in the obvious isomorphism he brings out between quantum collapse from a range of coexisting possible-actual states to a single actual state, and the common human experience going from a range of real-seeming possibilities to a single enacted one (what’s referred to as his “Jamesian view” above). But while he has appealed to this, he’s never (that I’ve seen) brought out a precise hypothesis of just what the connection presumed behind this isomorphism should be. If the hypothesis is that human decision just is quantum collapse, shouldn’t that come with speculation on how that’s instantiated in the brain? Shouldn’t there be some diagram of mechanism involving the psychological, the neurological, and the quantum physical? Does one show up in this new book?

According to this review, Stapp appears to go farther in appealing to psychological findings. But while I’m certainly not well-versed in neuroscience, I wonder if Stapp produces any hooks to grapple with direct confirmation of his hypotheses via current neuroscientific techniques. I suspect he is, and has always been, speaking past the neuroscientists rather than to them. Perhaps the paradigm of current neuroscience is so fundamentally classical in its physics that he has no choice. Yet with neuroscience making some good progress in many areas, could a better connection be made?

One hint of the possibility of convergence may be in Bruckner and Carroll’s “Self projection and the brain” (Trends Cog. Sci. 2006), which argues that the default state of the brain is prospection – which is to say, focused on the cloud of possibilities. Occam’s razor at least suggests that this default state would make most sense as an evolved feature of a world in which these possibilities are truly there; in a classically deterministic world all but one aren’t (although that paper does not follow its implications into this space).

By: Tony Brown

Tony Brown — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:13:35 +0000

Interesting review. Although it didn’t convince me to buy the book, it did put Stapp on my radar.

By: Jim Balter

Jim Balter — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:35:07 +0000

Mr. Flanagan has been pushing this quantum consciousness stuff even longer than Stapp has.

How “thoughtful and informed” can a review be by someone with a blurb on the cover of the book? Sounds like a conflict of interest to me, and CS&R undermines its credibility by publishing “reviews” by vested parties.

By: Brian J Flanagan

Brian J Flanagan — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:44:08 +0000

Thanks for a thoughtful and informed review. I differ with Henry on a few basic points, but on the whole regard his work as among the most advanced on the subject, together with Lockwood’s and my own.

By: Jim Balter

Jim Balter — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:16:09 +0000

Before joining the uncritical acceptance by this “review” of Stapp’s idée fixe that he’s been pushing for years, people should consider some of responses from people like Pat Hayes and Aaron Sloman from years ago:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22henry+stapp%22+%22pat+hayes%22