BOHR ON EPR
AS INFLUENCED BY JAMES AND KANT
PART II
In any case, what we want to do now is pursue the clue to Bohr's 1935 EPR statement that we have found in his 1929 Planck *Festschrift* statement (with my explanations in brackets):
"In particular, the apparent contrast between the continuous outward flow of associative thinking [the stream of consciousness] and the preservation of the unity of personality [which James did not understand about Kant] exhibits a suggestive analogy with the relation between the wave description of the motions of material particles, governed by the superposition principle, and their indestructible individuality. [This analogy is between {the observer in world 7 and the extended observer in worlds 7-5} and {the observed in world 1 and the extended observed in worlds 1-3}!] The unavoidable influence on atomic phenomena caused by observing them here corresponds to the well-known change of the tinge of the psychological experiences which accompanies any direction of the attention to one of their various elements."
There are three issues involved here: 1) what does Bohr mean by "tinge"; 2) what does James say about the psychological situation invoked by Bohr; 3) how does this psychological situation actually correspond to the situation in physics?
1) According to my dictionary, the fourth and relevant definition of "tinge" is: A slight admixture, as of some qualifying property or characteristic.
2) James says, on pp. 183-4 of volume two of "The Principles of Psychology":
"*Whatever sensible data can be attended to together we locate together. Their several extents seem one extent. ...They become, in short, so many properties of ONE AND THE SAME REAL THING.* This is the first and great commandment, the fundamental 'act' by which our world gets spatially arranged.
"In this *coalescence in a 'thing'*, one of the coalescing sensations is held to *be* the thing, the other sensations are taken for more or less accidental *properties*, or modes of appearance. The sensation chosen to be the thing essentially is the most constant and practically important of the lot; most often it is hardness or weight."
And now from the chapter that Bohr read, "The Stream of Thought", p. 285 of volume one:
"If the sensations we receive from a given organ have their causes thus picked out for us by the conformation of the organ's termination, Attention, on the other hand, out of all the sensations yielded, picks out certain ones as worthy of its notice and suppresses all the rest.
"Helmholtz says that we notice only those sensations which are signs to us of *things*. But what are things? Nothing, as we shall abundantly see, but special groups of sensible qualities, which happen practically or aesthetically to interest us, to which we therefore give substantive names, and which we exalt to the exclusive status of independence and dignity. But in itself, apart from my interest, a particular dust-wreath on a windy day is just as much of an individual thing, and just as much or as little deserves an individual name, as my own body does.
"And then, among the sensations we get from each separate thing, what happens? The mind selects again. It chooses certain of the sensations to represent the thing most *truly* and considers the rest as its appearances, modified by the conditions of the moment. Thus my table-top is *square*, after but one of an infinite number of retinal sensations which it yields, the rest of them being sensations of two acute and two obtuse angles; but I call the latter *perspective* views, and the four right angles the *true* form of the table, and erect the attribute squareness into the table's essence, for aesthetic reasons of my own."
3) Now, the stream of consciousness is similar in both the first-person psychological situation and the third-person physics situation. What is different is the quantum object under observation within the context of quantum measurement theory. In the physics case it is an atomic entity such as an elementary particle, while in the psychological case it is the quantum brain, where we have taken into account that only the elements of the synaptic junctions are truly atomic entities in the physical world, while the neurons and networks exist in the emotional world and the whole brain exists in the mental world.
In the physics case, we have no trouble understanding what is meant by superposition, mentioned by Bohr as an essential element of his analogy. It has to do with the Hilbert space or state vector description in the mental and perhaps emotional worlds that pertains to the noumenal reality of the atomic entity in the physical world.
But in the case of the quantum brain and its atomic elements we have no idea what the observables would be or how we would go about setting up the Hilbert space or what "superposition" would mean. So let us go to the work of James, on p. 177 of volume two, to find out:
"The first thing that seems evident is that we have no *immediate* power of comparing together with any accuracy the extents revealed by different sensations. Our mouth-cavity feels indeed to itself smaller, and to the tongue larger, than it feels to the finger or the eye, our tympanic membrane feels larger than our finger-tip, our lips feel larger than a surface equal to them on our thigh. So much comparison is immediate; but it is vague; and for anything exact we must resort to other help.
"*The great agent in comparing the extent felt by one sensory surface with that felt by another, is superposition - superposition of one surface upon another, and superposition of one outer thing upon many surfaces*. Thus are exact equivalences and common measures introduced, and the way prepared for numerical results."
At first blush, this would seem to have nothing to do with superposition as it is meant in quantum theory. However, if we consider now that we are not dealing with sensory surfaces in a classical manner, but rather in terms of the physiological homunculus that maps sensory surfaces of the body onto areas of the quantum brain (this is strongly suggested, of course, by the first paragraph from James above), then the relevance is revealed, for such a physiological homunculus will indeed correspond to the quantum description of an atomic entity, and the noumenal aspect of that atomic entity, its indestructible individuality, will be the philosophical homunculus in its aspect as the atomic soul pervading the brain. The other Janus-like face of the philosophical homunculus will correspond to the observer itself, across the oroboric abyss, in the meta-physical world, for the macroscopic observer must indeed be unified with the atomic entity that pervades its quantum brain with the currents of consciousness.
Just prior to the above passage, on p. 171, we find:
"*The feeling of motion* has generally been assumed by physiologists to be impossible until the positions of *terminus a quo* and *terminus a quem* are severally recognized,... but we can only *infer* that which we already generically know in some more direct fashion, and it is experimentally certain that we have the feeling of motion given us as a direct and simple *sensation*."
First of all this same point was made in the context of quantum theory by David Bohm on p. 154 of his 1951 textbook, "Quantum Theory":
"In classical theory,...energy and momentum can be expressed as functions of positions and velocities.... In quantum theory, however, the energies and momenta cannot be expressed in this way. Thus, classically, the momentum is defined as p = lim as delta t -> 0 of m delta x / delta t. But we have already seen that, in the quantum domain, this limit does not really exist when delta t is made too small. The only course that seems to be left open is to regard momentum as an independent physical property of matter...."
Now, the solution of Bohm and James is not quite adequate either, because if momentum is regarded as a noumenal property of matter that is reconstructed in the phenomenal world of the observer as a *sensation*, then it is clear that the spacetime continuum, which is inherently phenomenal will not be on the same level as energy and momentum and hence not complementary to them. In his discussion with Carl von Weizsacker, Bohr made clear that complementary elements must be on the same level, and hence parallel rather than circular, at least apparently, although we shall see how they can be both simultaneously.
Later, in "Wholeness and Implicate Order", Bohm again returns to this question on pp. 200-5. There he says in addition that we must regard motion as the holomovement, but he does not seem to realize that the formula he rejects for motion is in fact freed from contradiction by quantum theory and by the notion of the holomovement! For if we regard momentum as the noumenal element, or the thing itself, then we will measure it phenomenally agains the background of spacetime. To achieve complementarity it must be possible to regard space as the noumenal element and measure it phenomenally against a background of momentum, or motion.
The formula for motion that Bohm rejects *is* that background, and it comes from comparing phenomenal space and time, as the earlier point of extension and duration, to pseudo-noumenal space, as the later point of extension and duration. This assumes that an unfoldment of the quantum explicate order has thus occurred from its source in the mental sub-world of the seventh or metaphysical world, which is the Mind of the Observer and the quantum implicate order. (Thus all unfoldments are from the phenomenal realm into the noumenal realm.)
Now, in the case of motion, a rather unique thing happens: the phenomenal space in the fifth or phenomenal world and pseudo-noumenal space in the second or emotional world are each referred downward one world apiece. As an etheric condition and a physical construct they are then introjected phenomenally, as is the pattern in all experiences or experiments, where they become reconstructed elements in the sixth or causal world. The formula for momentum or motion is precisely an expression of this relation between physical construct and etheric condition, between Sensation and Attention.
So, the upshot is that the formula for momentum or motion is true, but as one of two complementary ways of viewing things, not as an absolute. The superpositions of spatial surfaces that James invokes for his determination of spatial relations are precisely superpositions of the pseudo-noumenal spaces, so all these considerations establish that James' use of the term "superposition" is entirely relevant to and revelatory about quantum theory. But his confusion, and Bohm's, in not grasping the role of the formula for momentum or motion, within the new view of complementarity, must be overcome. My clarification here should accomplish that, once it is fully comprehended.
On p. 175 of volume two we find the following intriguing passages from James, which undoubtedly further the purpose of laying the real phenomenological foundations for quantum theory:
"...*in the education of spatial discrimination the motions of impressions across sensory surfaces must have been the principal agent* in breaking up our consciousness of the surfaces into a consciousness of its parts.
"...*movement of surface under object is (for purposes of stimulation) equivalent to movement of object over surface)*."
In any case, the agent of superposition in the psychological situation is none other than the physiological homunculus, and the formulation that James gives here should be a key to the unification of Hilbert space with Einstein space. The homunculus is in fact the aspect of the quantum brain that is the actually observed system in the first-person case of our actual psychological experience, and its quantum description involves the superpositions of spatial surfaces as James defines them.
So, now that we have given meaning to all the elements of the analogy invoked by Bohr, all of the discussion of the role of attention in my previous essay, entitled "THE METAPHYSICAL MESSAGE OF BOHR, JAMES, AND GOETHE", which was in the context of the psychological situation, can now be carried over to the physics situation. That is because the role of the observer and the observer's experience, including the role of attention, is not essentially different in the case of the first-person observations of the observer's own quantum brain and the third-person observations of atomic entities in nature. Both cases proceed within the context of quantum measurement theory, where there must be a reconstruction of the quantum noumenal reality within the phenomenal experience of the observer. It is that reconstruction that actually becomes the known, and only through the noumenal reconstruction of the phenomenal reconstruction, as the negation of the negation, can it be projected back onto the noumenon in nature, which thereby becomes pliant to our experience and our will. The epistemological situation is essentially the same in the psychological case and in the physics case. Each can therefore be used to elucidate the meaning of the other.
The essential meaning of Bohr's explanation of EPR that thus emerges has then to do with fact that, in the process of knowing any noumenal data, the knowing process necessarily adds an element that has to do with the conditions of the knowing. The known is more than the noumenal data concerning the noumenal atomic entity and its noumenal description, and it must necessarily include the boundary conditions between the realm of the observed and the realm of the observer. The known that gets projected back into noumenal reality is the composite of the phenomenal construct of the atomic entity and the phenomenal condition that must necessarily accompany it in the phenomenal description and be the context for any prediction about the phenomenal construct of the atomic entity, which is the most that we can ever hope to test in any experiment.
In the psychological case, we must explain how a state of mind or a phenomenal experience results in an action that is causally efficacious in the noumenal world. James avers that this happens automatically and is therefore a physiological issue, but he also admits that most of our volitions resulting in attentions are motivated by intentions with respect to actions. James also says that the automatic enactment of a state of mind is due to an act on the part of nature, and hence it falls within the province of something that physics should explain.
At the end of the briefer course, James gives his true verdict on the metaphysical approach, which Folse rejects. James, on the contrary, asserts that the problem of the knower and the known can *only* be solved by metaphysics. Indeed, the knower knows the known not just as a phenomenal construct, but also as a projection onto noumenal reality of which he has knowledge. This involves the related issues of the enduring object in philosophy and the record of an experiment in physics. So, the upshot is that in the final analysis, what is required from nature is just passive pliancy on the part of the unknowable noumenon in nature to our experience and our will, or to the phenomenal result of our experiment in the physics case. That the world is so constituted, both metaphysically and panpsychically, is an essential, if not *the* essential, ingredient of the Copenhagen interpretation. This is neither obscure nor absurd, but in keeping with the results of the phenomenological tradition of Descartes, Husserl, and Kant, which is arguably the mainstream of Western philosophy.
I think I have demonstrated what the Copenhagen interpretation actually is and what it actually says about EPR. This truth has been obscured by those who did not have the insight to go into these matters, which are admittedly extremely difficult. Only with the searchlight of eternity can these matters be correctly explicated. Without doing so, however, one might reasonably expect that critics would refrain from denouncing what they do not even begin to understand.
Nor are the opinions of half-hearted advocates of the Copenhagen interpretation, such as Henry Stapp, anything but confusing when, in apparent ignorance of its deep metaphysical content, they assert that it is merely the "pragmatic" approach. As I have demonstrated here, nothing could be further from the truth. Bohr himself gave rise to this source of confusion by not distinguishing clearly between his algorithmic claims, which *are* pragmatic, and his philosophic claims, which are phenomenal and phenomenological. As I have explained in the previous essay, these respective claims pertain to the grasp and the reach of the man. The reach exceeds the grasp and points toward a transcending transformation of it. Bohr was both an experimental physicist as well as a philosopher and a psychologist of the highest order, even though it remains for us today to turn Bohr's reach into our grasp. This is the direction of the next great breakthrough in physics!
Elijah, as the forerunner of the Christ, is working through me now to restore the hearts of the fathers (Descartes and Bohr) to the hearts of the children, lest the Lord come and smite the earth with a curse. If the Light of God comes when our minds are in utter confusion, that confusion will be amplified, resulting in the afforementioned "curse". Therefore, make straight the paths (neural pathways) of the Lord! Shukanadi, ki jai!
Peter Joseph Mutnick 1949 - 2000
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