Note that the kind of entanglement you're talking about is the same as
randomness. Bohm's version of QM makes this explicit. There's a
deterministic wave function of the universe so that everything effects
everything else instantaneously (which is why there's no good Bohmian
version of QFT) and quantum randomness is just a consequence of our
ignorance of the complete wave function. But Tegmark's paper shows that
quantum effects must be very small and the brain is essentially
classical - which makes sense from an evolutionary viewpoint. You want
your brain to be classical, except for a very rare randomness to avoid
the problem of Buridan's ass - and you don't even need brain randomness
for that, there's plenty of randomness in the environment.
Brent
On 1/31/2011 6:27 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Hi David,
You just happened to mention the 800kg Gorilla in the room! While
we can rattle off a sophisticated narrative about decoherence effects
and quote from some Tegmark paper, the fact remains that entanglement
is real and while we can argue that its effects could be minimized, we
cannot prove that it is irrelevant to supervenience. This is a
game-changer for physical supervenience arguments. But the problem is
much worse! It is becoming harder to how up Tegmark's prohibition on
quantum effects. Just recently an article appeared in some
peer-reviewed journal discussing how entangled states are present for
macroscopically significant periods of time in the eyes of birds.
Don't they have a higher average body temperature than humans?
-----Original Message----- From: David Shipman
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 7:41 PM
To: Everything List
Subject: Re: A comment on Mauldin's paper “Computation and Consciousness”
On Jan 30, 4:13 pm, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Jan 25, 9:04 am, "Stephen Paul King" <stephe...@charter.net> wrote:
> Dear Bruno and Friends,
While we are considering the idea of “causal efficacy”
here and not hidden variable theories, the fact that it
has been experimentally verified that Nature violates
the principle Locality. Therefore the assumption of
local efficacy that Mauldin is using for the supervenience
thesis is not realistic and thus presents a flaw in his
argument.
Local supervenience doesn't have to be argued from
fundamental physics. It can be argued from neurology.
Mental states arent affected by what goes on outside
the head unless information is conveyed by the sense
This isn't true, is it?
So we have two particles (A and B) that are entangled.
Entanglement is never destroyed, it is only obscured by subsequent
interactions with the environment.
Particle A goes zooming off into outer space.
10 years later, Particle B becomes incorporated into my brain.
The next day, an alien scientist measures the entangled property on
Particle A.
This will have an immediate non-local effect on Particle B won't it?
And since B's state has been altered, and it is part of my brain, then
my brain state has been altered as well, hasn't it?
Maybe only a tiny amount, obscured by the many environmental
interactions that the two particles have been subjected to since the
initial entanglement, but in a way that is real and at least
conceivably significant.
And if that is true, then to the extent that mental states supervene
on brain states, my mental state would also have been altered by non-
local effects.
Or is that wrong?
Regards,
David
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
