torsdag 17 februari 2011

The body-mind problem - FQXI-contest 2011.

Dear Ulla Marianne Mattfolk,

Congratulations...your submission to the FQXi Essay Contest has been approved! Your essay is now available for download and discussion on this FQXi forum page.

My FQXI-essay here.

Thanks again for your essay submission, and we look forward to a vibrant discussion of your essay in the FQXi forum!

- The Foundational Questions Institute


This wasn't so easy, because of the small size, 9p only. I would need much more....
The topic is so wast. But after many late nights this is what I achieved. Some said it is impossible for a non-physicist to write a physical essay, but they don't know me:) Few is so stubborn as me. Of course I can write :)

Well, the result is free to judge.


The body-mind problem as a play between coherence and decoherence.
Abstract:
Living matter results from mixed states of quantum and classical physics; the mind and the body. The life as a function from this depends on a digital state function, and the Schrödinger cat is ‘dead and alive’ at the same time. There is no total wave collapse, only partial with interference/superposition. In contrast to non-living systems, they don’t appear to optimize anything, but is intermediate, and reactive.

Life uses noise or dissipation as a tool to create stability and coherence, through formation of decoherence and negentropic states. But life is indeed quantal entanglement, resonance and superposition, with also noise as perceptions from the surroundings, to keep up the quantal states. To be a living matter made of ordinary atoms and molecules the decoherence is needed, and thence we have two different selves, one that we might call the decoherent singular I, and one that we usually call 'the wise man', or 'the magnetic body' in TGD; that is one classic and one quantal self. The longstanding problems of stress, homeostasis and sleep would also get a reasonable understanding.

Perceptions are also both classic, through bodily sensations and senses mostly, including thinking, and quantal in form of cognition, awareness, intention, qualia, and also OBE and paranormal events belonging to experiencies of our quantal self, the magnetic body. Paranormal events would then partly be explained in a simple way.

Download Essay PDF File

Write, and discuss, pls.

4 kommentarer:

  1. I forgot this.

    Robert Paster has also written an essay.
    http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/815

    Reality: Analog and Digital at the Same Time.
    He use also TGD as a tool to explain as instance the childhood developement of their minds, following the ideas of Piaget.

    Essay Abstract

    Reality is always simultaneously analog and digital. This is best understood by using an established branch of mathematics, adelic mathematics, which requires any object or phenomenon to always be understood using both real mathematics (analog) and a specific form of discrete mathematics (digital mathematics) called p-adic mathematics. The author has reviewed theories of physics that use adelic mathematics and focuses on one, topological geometrodynamics, that creates a rich theory of particle physics, cosmology, biophysics, and cognition. This paper explains why a purely mathematical argument leads to the use of adelic mathematics, discusses this in the context of epistemology and cognitive science, then shows how topological geometrodynamics applies adelic mathematic to a reconfigured model of space and time.

    Author Bio

    Robert Paster is an independent science researcher who recently completed an extensive study, summarized in the book New Physics and the Mind, of theories of physics that reject mainstream approaches, including string theory. This book proposes criteria for selecting the best of these theories, which is one centered on adelic mathematics. Mr. Paster is currently developing this theory’s application to the mind, which will be published as a follow-up book, Digital Mind Math. Mr. Paster’s academic background includes degrees in mathematics from M.I.T. and education from Harvard.

    SvaraRadera
  2. Jonathan J. Dickau wrote:

    Greetings Ulla,

    I find your essay intriguing, so I have downloaded it for a thorough reading. It is likely you will find some common ground with my essay here. I also mix physics questons with cognitive explorations.

    I greatly respect Matti and have had some thoughtful and productive interaction with him. I also note that you cite Jill Bolte Taylor's book, and I do also. In fact, I can report the great pleasure of having received a personal response to my e-mail from her, just this morning.

    So we will probably have some interesting things to discuss, once I have read your essay from top to bottom.

    Good Luck to you!

    Regards,

    Jonathan J. Dickau


    I looked earlier, but then I did not realize he belonged to my genre:) He has links too both to Bolte and to Zeilinger, with whom he seems to have been more near.

    His essay:
    When considering whether reality is fundamentally analog or digital, I can think of convincing arguments for each case, but feel that both answers are limiting, and that the fundamental nature of reality is far more interesting. I am firmly convinced reality is neither exclusively discrete nor solely continuous – as it must display both faces for either aspect to be manifested. The nature of reality is both analog and digital, rather than exclusively one or the other. Observable phenomena satisfy the constraints of both continuous and discrete natures at once. The attributes we observe appear discrete or continuous largely as a matter of choice. What information we choose to observe or preserve, and how we take in or process information, will affect what we see. Often the choice is automatic, as a single sub-atomic particle or atom acting as a localized observer can induce the appearance of classical variables and discrete entities, even though the global wavefunction remains coherent during local interactions. Nature is fundamentally unified however, regardless of all appearances, though any attempt to probe it finds discrete quanta of energy, information, and form. This paper proposes that reality is both analog and digital because nature finds the most effective or efficient means available to encode energy and information as observable form.

    http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/944

    SvaraRadera
  3. http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2010/10/monks-scientists-new-body-of-thought.html

    When you’re talking about cells, are you referring to their minds or their bodies? In Tibetan, every organism has a mind and a body, and you have to be speaking about one or the other

    “I told him that Westerners don’t usually think of cells as having a mind,” Eisen recalls.

    the Robert A. Paul Emory Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). It was the vision of Paul, the former dean of Emory College, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama that led to the formation of the Emory Tibet Partnership and the ETSI.

    Prototype materials were created in English covering three areas: physics, neuroscience and biology and the life sciences. Work is under way to refine the curricula,

    Video: http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2010/10/monks-scientists-new-body-of-thought.html

    Charles Raison, clinical director of the Emory Mind-Body Program. http://www.psychiatry.emory.edu/PROGRAMS/mindbody/mission.html

    http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2010/10/quest-for-inner-peace.html
    Emory researchers are looking for ways to treat depression without medication – including the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of compassion meditation. An initial study found that Emory students who regularly practiced compassion meditation had a significant reduction in stress and physical responses to stress.

    So if you are not depressed, are you happy? What exactly is happiness? Happiness is something that people tend to take for granted. But very often,” he adds, “you lose sight of the deeper psychological or devotional insights that are required to get to a point of deep happiness.

    http://dalailama.emory.edu/2010/compassion.html

    SvaraRadera
  4. http://sciencewriter.org/2011/01/controlling-a-mind-neuron-by-neuron/
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=single-worm-neurons

    A team at Harvard University has built a computerized system to manipulate worms—making them start and stop, giving them the sensation of being touched, and even prompting them to lay eggs, as seen in the videos here—by stimulating their neurons individually with laser light, all while the worms swim freely in a petri dish. The technology may help neuroscientists for the first time gain a complete understanding of the workings of an animal’s nervous system.

    Inducing a worm to lay eggs with laser light from Samuel Lab on Vimeo. Video at http://vimeo.com/16899547

    SvaraRadera