This is an introductory thought on the need for a new philosophy for the quantum age, in response to this question to me on Twitter:
Isolated quantum systems observed in their eigenstates appear to be in thermal equilibrium because their momentum/energy has been transferred. What links the moments? What is the link here, between quantum coherence and the statistical features associated with thermal dynamics?
I want to be sure we’re not conflating things here. Did you mean the probabilities of perceived wave collapse or in the process of entropy increase? Let’s start with wave collapse to Eigenstate. What we’re up against here is our lack of the language to properly discuss this, which mostly shows in our conflation of terms used differently in coherence and decohered environment, such as real, cause, event, probability, world, universe, wave, energy, etc. And along with that is the continued attempt to understand the quantum in classical terms. As Anton Zeilinger has noted, Kant was the philosopher who grounded the world of classical physics and we now need a Kant of the Quantum. I would include relativity too, but this leaves us in uncharted territory forging our own paths.
On the quantum side we can know almost nothing except what we observe in collapsed particles, which hints at superposition, entanglement, arationality, and lack of causality, spacetime, and entity. We cannot conceive this and any attempt to do so will be wrong because any such conjecture will necessity be in the form of our subjective sensibilities of space and time and governed by our innate reason, which cannot grasp a state of arationality and lack of spacetime. We inevitably revert to spatial/temporal metaphors. We take all that to mean all possibilities exist in timeless, spaceless relation of superposition, but it is important to keep in mind we can only refer to it negatively. We cannot validly describe anything positive about its nature. This is what I refer to when I speak of fundamental reality, and refuse to repeat the error of metaphysics by imagining it any further.
What we observe on our side of the gate of decoherence are probabilities of finding particles upon decoherence. These probabilities are expressed in density matrices which illustrate our imagining of how particles are allowed to pass through the gate into the decohered environment. There are various theories of how this works, but we know that the possibilities are guided by what is yet possible in the decohered environment and initiated by an observer. But even at this, things become hopelessly murky and lead to a lot of bad metaphysics; and this murkiness begins with the nature of the observer. Wigner, among others, believed that it is our consciousness that initiates decoherence, and there are echos of that in Penrose; but most physicists today resist that idea. I believe their resistance is motivated by the felt need to maintain the physical world as separate from our consciousness and objectively knowable. The stability of their profession as it is known today depends on it, but I believe Wigner was probably right. More on that later.
We now know that particles are just localized increased energy along the waves of quantum fields. These quantum field waves are the most fundamental existence we know on our side of the gate, and we need a term other than fundamental existence to distinguish it from the fundamental quantum existence. We can’t yet call it fundamental reality, however, or we run into confusion of the definition of “real” in physics, which is having two measurable properties – the minimum requirement for a real entity. Leggett has demonstrated that reality does not exist at this level. All we have are energy waves and the ephemeral and chaotic quantum foam it continuously spews and reclaims. Everything we encounter is a temporary self-organization of the various frequencies unique to each field out of this churning chaos. Everything emerges from this sea of foam and waves. And everything eventually returns to its chaos. This tends to refute metaphysical inventions such as many-world theory, which sees superposition as something more than mere possibilities of particles appearing, and instead takes it to the level of the famous cat – an entire world existing in quantum state, and each world itself splitting off with every new event into complete other orthogonal worlds. This imagines that our reductive representational world actually changes fundamental reality (as I defined it above). I suggest rather that the only change occurs on our side of the gate. Where spacetime and causality do not exist, there can be no change. What we experience is merely a mental construct from a greatly reduced array of possibilities in the decohered environment. Other worlds may exist, but only as the construct of other conscious beings with no connection to ours. Nor does panpsychism or cosmic consciousness exist – at least not at this fundamental level, as consciousness itself is an emergent self-organized energy event. That is the error of metaphysics, which physicists increasingly fall into while feeling their way through the murkiness. It seems more the case that decoherence only occurs at the particle level, and we make of it what we will through emergence. Again, more on that to come.
But the murkiness still remains, all due to the murkiness of the nature of the observer. From here we can’t see our way to what it means to emerge from chaos and return because the nature of the self-organized order itself is somehow entangled with our perception of it. And that’s the case all the way back to initial decoherence. Even when we measure a particle, we are entangled with the apparatus. We cannot know of any wave collapse without our participation in the collapse. And there is no unmotivated justification to claim such a collapse ever happens without our participation.
As Zeilinger noted, Kant was the philosopher of the world of classical physics, and much of what he wrote is outdated by the 20th century discoveries; but not his epistemology, with which modern neuroscience is very much in accord. What if we are to take seriously his prescient demonstration of the subjective nature of space, time, and reason, our world as representation, and the illusions created when reason is applied beyond sense data? In the updated version, our consciousness is an evolved reductive mechanism that takes raw sense data, reduces it to what is most important for survival in the immediate environment, and draws it in the imagination through, color, extension, Individuation, and sequence as it orders certain chosen events into a picture of a world amenable to our actions and predictions. This is our objective/rational universe, and exists only in our mental representations. If humanity were to perish, so would this entire universe. What would remain is that unknown fundamental reality.
This rational/objective mode is not our only means of knowing, and not even the most profound or true. I will explore that in the next entry to this blog. But for this mode, our reality is defined by pragmatism – true is derived from the useful. And the useful is determined locally among a few chosen events. Expand the frame of reference and its usefulness disappears along with the constructed logic of the associations. Entropy increases as we head back to the quantum foam.
But rather than this insight clearing the murkiness, the mystery of existence becomes yet darker. At the center of this is consciousness of the observer. By all appearances, consciousness is a very recently-evolved energy event. Everything we can encounter is an energy event. We measure the energy of conscious states. If we cut off the supply of energy, consciousness dissipates into the environment – available for new events. As such, consciousness cannot be fundamental – we have never observed it apart from a highly evolved living organism, despite the fanciful metaphysical inventions of some. But then, there is nothing more irresistible to the metaphysician than consciousness, in which inheres the same mystery as quantum reality. Only a small part of our mentality is revealed, and as in fundamental reality, the more that is revealed, the more we become aware of the immensity that remains concealed. Our concealed mentality makes the decisions for which our rational consciousness takes credit after the fact. If there is a personal identity, it lies in the unconscious, unknown to us. We meet ourselves only in dreams where spacetime is twisted and rationality is tethered. And then, only fleetingly. We are as much a mystery to ourselves as is fundamental reality. We only see what is passed through the gate, and from that we construct an identity. We know ourselves as a novel we write daily until the day we die.
The great mystery veiled in our murkiness lies within this consciousness. It brings about decoherence in quantum entanglement. It is – we are quantum. Penrose has proposed that our entanglement with an event creates our consciousness – an event of mutual relationship between fundamental reality and our uniquely organized energy event. Our mentality begins with this great reduction from All to our tightly limited universe, and proceeds through the further reduction of attention to limited portions of sense date, which are again reduced to object, concepts, and ideas in the Kantian sense. But the real secret lies in that initial reduction from fundamental reality. To what extent are space, time and causality real or merely imagined sensations – existing only our minds as do colors? Is there something of fundamental reality that actually exists as space, time, and causality in emergence from the quantum foam, or merely just our way of creating sensation?
To answer this we would need to step outside of our consciousness, which makes the question unanswerable. But the inevitable breakdown of all rational systems over time, as new information overwhelms the arbitrarily chosen events at the beginning and expands the frame of reference to the breaking point, suggests that all that determines our universe is no more externally real than the color red. But that doesn’t mean it is purely our invention either. Our sensation of red is determined by a set frequency of light.
The murkiness here only darkens. Our sensations are caused by something in which we stand in mutual relation. Our consciousness is more than a computation machine, but rather a special type of event entangled with everything else. It is energy, as is everything we encounter. But fundamental reality always conceals more the more it reveals. Even if we accept energy is the essence of consciousness and our universe, the enigma merely shifts to the nature of energy. Defining it as the capacity to do work, or measuring it does nothing to answer that question, and we come no closer to primal truth without coming to terms with that mystery. We have merely chased it all the way to the gate, but struggle to ask it the right questions.
Increasing the accuracy of particle measurement, spinning theories of everything, or inventing wild metaphysical tales will never illuminate this murkiness. The Kantian model will continue to provide pragmatic benefit, but has outlived its claim to discover the truth of reality. That is only to be found in a deeper understanding of our own consciousness in relation to a larger chaotic reality. An esthetic rather than ascetic sounding of the vibrations we are in relation to the reality antecedent to the idea. A radical rethinking of what we are, reality, and what it means to know.
Logic is as primitive as the most primitive human. A gross simplification to something a limited mind could grasp. The next step in our thinking would be to move beyond the computational mechanism of reducing the world to atomistic facts and placing them in a logical order. We know there is no one unitary space time, no one privileged perspective, and no possible systematic explanation of everything. The next phase is to enhance our ability to understand the world in accord with relativity. A world in constant flux seen equally validly from many perspectives. An awareness that there are no atoms, just relations of events, and events are never static. We already have this ability to a degree, which is what we see in great art, poetry, and music. The perspectival play and motion of art. The relational play of harmony in music both in the movement of melody an tension of chords. The music of poetry in its harmony among words and layers of meaning within the word.
In doing so we disentangle from the treacherous web of the most skillful and pernicious of the Sophists. Philosophers lie, and so we must think like poets.
Too Late for the Gods 