Henry P. Stapp's research while affiliated with University of California, Berkeley and other places
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Publications (198)
The final chapter of von Neumann’s book is entitled “The Measuring Process”. But the real topic is “us”, and our acquisition of knowledge. The core message of quantum mechanics, in the words of Niels Bohr, is: “In the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.” It is our influence on our acts of acquiring knowledge that allows...
Classical mechanics developed during the nineteenth century—due principally to the work of James Clerk Maxwell—into a form that involved two different kinds of physical stuff: “particles” and “waves”. Electrons are the prime example of particles, whereas “light”, in the form of the electromagnetic field, is the prime example of a wave. Particles ar...
Quantum theory was originally formulated as a non-relativistic theory. It was assumed that there was a “preferred” coordinate frame that labeled each point in the 4D space-time by three spatial coordinates x, y, and z, plus a time variable t. The quantum state of the full physical universe was defined at each time t, and it evolved from an earlier...
Orthodox Quantum Mechanics is based on the idea that a physically described state of the universe exists at an instant of time over all of three-dimensional space, and advances, event by event, into an indeterminate future, leaving behind a fixed and settled sequence of past states. Certain phenomena associated with this chain of events appear to i...
Every culture has its lore about the origins and nature of the world and its people. Those ideas are often associated with a deity, or deities, and an associated religion. But there arose in western civilization in the seventeenth century, in connection with the ideas of Galileo Galilei and Sir Francis Bacon, the notion of a “scientific” approach t...
The evolving history of the universe is normally regarded as being divided into three parts: past, present, and future. The present instant “now” separates the past that has already happened from the future that has not yet happened. One idea of the nature of things is described by the phrase “closed past, open future”.
Quantum mechanics has a peculiar feature that Einstein called “Spooky action at a distance”, and which he found problematic. The problem arises under certain realizable empirical conditions involving two different experiments performed at essentially the same time in two far-apart experimental regions. Under the specified empirical conditions, the...
According to nineteenth century classical physics, reality is described in purely physical terms, and is deterministic: the world is described in terms of mathematical properties attached to space-time points, and the future is completely determined by the past, by virtue of mathematical conditions on these properties. This formerly-believed featur...
The foregoing chapters have elucidated a science-based view of reality that I call “Realistically-Construed Orthodox Quantum Mechanics”. It is profoundly different from the essentially Newtonian conception represented by classical mechanics. A comprehensive comparison of the two views in the preceding chapters has shown classical physics view to be...
The realistically construed orthodox quantum mechanics described in this book has three components: (1), A physically described universe represented by an evolving quantum mechanical state; (2), An ordered sequence of probing questions that arise in the minds of observers; and (3), A “nature” that chooses and implements—in concordance with Born’s s...
“The overwhelming question in neurobiology today is the relationship between the mind and the brain.” These are the words of Francis Crick [2]. In the same venue, famed neuroscientist Antonio Damasio [3] writes that the mind-brain question “towers above all others in the life sciences”.
Classical mechanics says that your thoughts cannot affect the behavior of particles; but realistically construed orthodox quantum mechanics says they can.
This book explains, in simple but accurate terms, how orthodox quantum mechanics works. The author, a distinguished theoretical physicist, shows how this theory, realistically interpreted, assigns an important role to our conscious free choices. Stapp claims that mainstream biology and neuroscience, despite nearly a century of quantum physics, stil...
The classical physical theories that prevailed in science from the time of Isaac Newton until the dawn of the twentieth century were empirically based on human experience and made predictions about our mental experiences, yet excluded from the dynamics all mental properties. But how can one rationally get mental things out if no mental elements are...
Danko Georgiev has published a series of papers that claim that the Quantum Zeno Effect that I employ in my explanation of how our minds are able to influence our actions is nullifies by environmental decoherence effects. I give here a simple proof that environmental decoherence does not nullify the quantum Zeno effect.
The original Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was offered as a pragmatic methodology for making predictions about future experiences on the basis of knowledge gleaned from past experiences. It was, therefore, fundamentally about mental realities, and refrained from speaking about a more inclusive reality. Von Neumann created, later, w...
The principle of sufficient reason asserts that anything that happens does so
for a reason: no definite state of affairs can come into being unless there is
a sufficient reason why that particular thing should happen. This principle is
usually attributed to Leibniz, although the first recorded Western philosopher
to use it was Anaximander of Miletu...
Robert Griffiths has recently addressed, within the framework of a
'consistent quantum theory' that he has developed, the issue of whether, as is
often claimed, quantum mechanics entails a need for faster-than-light transfers
of information over long distances. He argues that the putative proofs of this
property that involve hidden variables includ...
The principle of sufficient reason asserts that anything that happens does so
for a reason: no definite state of affairs can come into being unless there is
a sufficient reason why that particular thing should happen. This principle is
usually attributed to Leibniz, although the first recorded Western philosopher
to use it was Anaximander of Miletu...
The question of ‘free will’ is the most important unresolved issue in the development of a science-based conception of reality.
Its importance stems from the fact that a person’s belief about the capacity of his mental aspects to influence his physical
behavior affects his actions, and thereby both his own future, and potentially the future of the...
Scientists in different fields are free, to some extent, to use concepts that appear to work for them, without regard to other
scientific disciplines. However, many of the greatest advances in science have come from unifying the treatments of neighboring
realms of phenomena. We are now engaged a great scientific endeavor to rationally connect the n...
Philosophers have tried doggedly for three centuries to understand the role of mind in the workings of a brain conceived to
function according to principles of classical physics. We now know no such brain exists: no brain, body, or anything else
in the real world is composed of those tiny bits of matter that Newton imagined the universe to be made...
Upon completing my article entitled The Copenhagen Interpretation (Stapp 1972), I sent the manuscript to Heisenberg for his approval or reaction. He expressed general approval, but raised
one point:
There is one problem I would like to mention, not in order to criticize the wording of your paper, but for inducing you to
more investigation of this...
The most direct evidence pertaining to the effects of conscious choices upon brain activities comes from experiments in which
consciously controlled cognitive efforts are found to be empirically correlated to measured physical effects in the brain.
An example is the experiment of Ochsner
et al. (2001). The subjects are trained how to cognitively r...
In the introduction to his book Quantum Theory and Reality the philosopher of science Mario Bunge
(1967, p. 4) said:
The physicist of the latest generation is operationalist all right, but usually he does not know, and refuses to believe,
that the original Copenhagen interpretation
– which he thinks he supports – was squarely subjectivist, i.e.,...
By the anthropic questions
I mean the following three queries:
1.
Why are the laws of nature so well tuned to support the biological structures we find here on earth, including our own human bodies and brains?
2.
Why, given the fact that the physically described structure of my body and brain has the form that it has, are certain activities of that...
A great deal has happened in psychology since the time of William James. However, many psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who intended to stay in tune with the basic precepts of physics became locked to the ideas of nineteenth century physicists and failed to acknowledge or recognize the jettisoning by twentieth century physicists of...
A tremendous burgeoning of interest in the problem of consciousness
is now in progress. The grip of the behaviorists
who sought to banish consciousness from science has finally been broken. This shift was ratified, for example, by the appearance
several years ago of a special issue of Scientific American
entitled The Hidden Mind (August 2002).
Increased interest in quantum mechanical theories of mind has been kindled by two recent books by Roger Penrose.
These books, The Emperor’s New Mind, and Shadows of the Mind, along with a paper by Hameroff and Penrose (1996), propose a quantum theory of consciousness that, like the present one,
is based on von Neumann’s formulation of quantum theo...
Eugene Wigner
introduced the term ‘orthodox’ to describe von Neumann’s formulation of quantum theory. I use the term more broadly to include,
at the pragmatic level, also the Copenhagen formulation. But at the ontological
level I mean the von Neumann–Tomonaga–Schwinger
description that includes the entire physical universe in the physically desc...
A crucial question now arises: How does this dynamical psychoneurological connection via process 1, which can merely pose a question, but not answer it, allow a person’s effort to influence his or her physical actions?
Take an example. Suppose you are in a situation that calls for you to raise your arm. Associations via stored memories should
elic...
Many neuroscientists who study the relationship of consciousness to brain processes want to believe that classical physics
will provide an adequate rational foundation for that task. But classical physics has bottom-up causation, and the direct
rational basis for the claim that classical physics is applicable to the full workings of the brain rests...
From the time of Isaac Newton until about 1925 science relegated consciousness to the role of passive viewer: our thoughts,
ideas, and feelings were treated as impotent bystanders to a march of events wholly controlled by microscopically describable
interactions between mechanically behaving microscopic basic elements. The founders of quantum mecha...
The feature of a brain state that tends to produce some specified experiential feedback can reasonably be expected to be a highly organized large-scale pattern of brain activity that, to be effective, must endure for a period of perhaps tens or hundreds of milliseconds. It must endure for an extended period in order to be able to bring into being t...
[A]n important lesson in physic is here to be learnt, the wonderful and powerful influence of the passions of the mind upon
the state and disorder of the body.” John Haygarth, 1801
Astronomy has affected civilization in many ways, but none more profoundly than its impact on our idea of what we human beings
actually are. We, in our innermost aspect, are our minds, and, strange as it may seem, our ideas about the nature of our minds
are rooted in astronomy. It is not that our minds themselves are rooted in the stars, instead of...
In 1935 Albert Einstein, in collaboration with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, published a landmark paper entitled “Can quantum
mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?” [1] Einstein had already been engaged for several years
in a discussion with Niels Bohr about the completeness of quantum theory. In the1935 paper Einste...
Niels Bohr introduced and explained his concept of “complementarity” in his famous 1927 Como Lecture (reproduced in [1]. He
recognized the need for the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics to be imbedded in a rationally coherent conceptual
framework if it were to serve as the core of an acceptable scientific theory. Yet the applications of t...
The theoretical ideas formulated in the seventeenth century by Isaac Newton (1643– 1727) and Galileo (1564–1642) reigned as the fundamental scientific precepts until the year 1900, when Max Planck's (1858–1947) work on the emission of light from a hole in a heated hollow sphere showed that something was fundamentally amiss. Planck's work identified...
Eugene Wigner published, in 1961, a widely reprinted article [1] entitled “Remarks on the Mind—Body Problem” in which he stresses
the basic role played by consciousness in quantum theory. But if consciousness is basic then the question immediately arises:
Whose consciousness? To explore this issue Wigner considers a situation in which his “friend”,...
Nonlocality: In quantum mechanics the term “nonlocality” refers to an apparent failure of a certain relativity-theory-based ► locality assumption. This assumption is that no information about which experiment is freely chosen and performed in one space-time region can be present in a second space-time region unless a point traveling at the speed of...
Eugene Wigner, in a paper entitled The Problem of Measurement [1], used the term “orthodox interpretation” to identify the interpretation spelled out in mathematical detail by John von
Neumann in his book Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik [2]. Von Neumann, in the chapter on the measuring process, shows how to expand the quantum mechanica...
Locality: The locality assumption is sometimes called “local causes”. It is the requirement that each physical event or change has a physical cause, and that this cause can be localized in the immediate space-time neighborhood of its effects. A collision of two billiard balls or the mechanical connections between the parts of a steam engine are cle...
Wolfgang Pauli was called by Einstein his “spiritual heir”, and his unrelenting demand for precision and clarity earned him
the title of “the conscience of physics”. A godson of the great philosopher of science Ernst Mach, he was philosophically
astute and, with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, a principal architect of the orthodox Copenhagen inte...
The purpose of this work is to resolve together four basic questions concerning the nature of nature. These questions are:
(1) How is mind related to matter? (2) How is quantum theory related to reality? (3) How is relativity theory reconciled globally
with that which locally we experience directly, namely the coming of reality into being or existe...
Let the thoughts be numbered and let thought number n and its associated
pattern of neural excitation be labeled by T (n). It has the structure
T (n) = T (n, 1) *T (n, 2) *¼*T (n, N),T (n) = T (n, 1) \ast T (n, 2) \ast\cdots\ast T (n, N),
where
T (n, i) = [T (n, i, 1) + T (n, i, 2) + ¼+ T (n, i, Nni )]. T (n, i) = [T (n, i, 1) + T (n, i, 2) + \c...
The ideas to be developed here are related to those of two of the other panelists, and it will be useful to describe the connections
right at the outset.
Science has enlarged tremendously the potential of human life. By augmenting our powers it has lightened the weight of tedious
burdens, and opened the way to a full flowering of man’s creative capacities. Yet, ironically, it is the shallowness of a
conception of man put forth in the name of science that is the cause today of the growing economic, e...
How does the world come to be just what it is, and not something else? Classical physics offers only a partial answer. It
says that the deterministic laws of nature fix everything over all of spacetime in terms of things at a single instant of
time. But the remaining question is then: What fixes things at this single instant of time? What determine...
Scientists of the late 1920s, led by Bohr and Heisenberg, proposed a conception of nature radically different from that of
their predecessors. The new conception, which grew out of efforts to comprehend the apparently irrational behavior of nature
in the realm of quantum effects, was not simply a new catalog of the elementary spacetime realities an...
A profound change in our scientific understanding of the role of human beings in the unfolding of our streams of conscious experiences was wrought by the 20th-century switch from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics. The streams of consciousness thoughts of human beings were converted from causally inert passive witnesses of the unfolding of a...
This article is an integration of the contents of three talks and one text that I have prepared and delivered during the past
year. They were aimed at four different audiences. The first talk was at a small conference in Philadelphia of scientists
who are leading proponents of various diverse efforts to further develop and understand quantum theory...
Classical physics can be viewed as a triumph of the idea that mind should be excluded from science, or at least from the physical
sciences. Although the founders of modern science, such as Descartes and Newton, were not so rash as to proclaim that mind
has nothing to do with the unfolding of nature, the scientists of succeeding centuries, emboldene...
A major revolution occurred in science during the twentieth century. This change leads to a profound transformation of the
scientific conception of human beings. Whereas the former conception of man undermines rational moral philosophy, the new
one can buttress it.
Classical physics has no natural place for consciousness. According to the classical precepts, the sole ingredients of the
physical universe are particles and local fields, and every physical system is completely described by specifying the dispositions
in space and time of these two kinds of localizable parts. Furthermore, the dispositions of thes...
Advances in science often unify conceptually things previously thought to be unconnected. Thus Newtonian mechanics unified
our understanding of stellar and terrestial motions, and Maxwell?’s theory unified our understanding of electromagnetic phenomena
and light. Einstein’s special theory of relativity unified our concepts of space and time, and hi...
A satisfactory understanding of the connection between mind and matter should answer the following questions: What sort of
brain action corresponds to a conscious thought? How is the content of a thought related to the form of the corresponding
brain action? How do conscious thoughts guide bodily actions?
Defects occasioned by the advent of quantum mechanics are described in detail of recent arguments by John Searle and by Jaegwon Kim pertaining to the question of the complete reducibility to the physical of the apparent capacity of a person's conscious thoughts to affect the behaviour of that person's physically described brain.
A simple exactly solvable model is given of the dynamical coupling between a person's classically described perceptions and that person's quantum mechanically described brain. The model is based jointly upon von Neumann's theory of measurement and the empirical findings of close connections between conscious intentions and synchronous oscillations...
In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the concept of "physical" embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of the physical that hold in classical physical theories. Certain of these properties contradict the character of t...
The principal quantum mechanical theories of the mind/brain connection are described.
A quantum mechanical theory of the relationship between perceptions and brain dynamics based on von Neumann's theory of measurments is applied to a recent quantum theoretical treatment of binocular rivaly that makes essential use of the quantum Zeno effect to give good fits to the complex available empirical data. The often-made claim that decohere...
The Solvay conference of 1927 marked the birth of quantum theory. This theory constitutes a radical break with prior tradition
in physics, because it avers, if taken seriously, that nature is built not out of matter but out of knowings. However, the
founders of the theory stipulated, cautiously, that the theory was not to be taken seriously, in thi...
I shall describe the beautiful fit of the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead and William James with the concepts of relativistic quantum field theory developed by Tomonaga and Schwinger. The central concept is a set of happenings each of which is assigned a space-time region. This growing set of non-overlapping regions fill out a growing space-time re...
The classical mechanistic idea of nature that prevailed in science during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an essentially mindless conception: the physically described aspects of nature were asserted to be completely determined by prior physically described aspects alone, with our conscious experiences entering only passively. During the...
Physical situations in which quantum systems communicate continuously to their classically described environment are not covered by contemporary quantum theory, which requires a temporary separation of quantum degrees of freedom from classical ones. A generalization would be needed to cover these situations. An incomplete proposal is advanced for c...
Replacing faulty nineteenth century physics by its orthodox quantum successor converts the earlier materialist conception of nature to a structure that does not enforce the principle of the causal closure of the physical. The quantum laws possess causal gaps, and these gaps are filled in actual scientific practice by inputs from our streams of cons...
René Descartes proposed an interactive dualism that posits an interaction between the mind of a human being and some of the matter in his or her brain. However, the classical physical theories that reigned during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are based exclusively on the material/physical part of Descartes' ontology, and they purport to g...
Niels Bohr stated, and Werner Heisenberg reiterated, that “in the great drama of existence we ourselves are both actors and spectators.” Their emphasis stems from the fact that the entry of human beings into physics as actors constitutes the most fundamental philosophical departure of twentieth-century basic physics from its eighteenth- and ninetee...
The hidden-variable theorems of Bell and followers depend upon an assumption, namely the hidden-variable assumption, that conflicts with the precepts of quantum philosophy. Hence from an orthodox quantum perspective those theorems entail no faster-than-light transfer of information. They merely reinforce the ban on hidden variables. The need for so...
Support is adduced for two related conjectures of simplicity of the analytic structure of the S-matrix and related function; namely, Sato's conjecture that the S-matrix is a solution of a maximally over-determined system of pseudo-differential equations, and our conjecture that the singularity spectrum of any bubble diagram function has the conorma...
Rene Descartes proposed an interactive dualism that posits an interaction between the mind of a human being and some of the matter located in his or her brain. Isaac Newton subsequently formulated a physical theory based exclusively on the material/physical part of Descartes' ontology. Newton's theory enforced the principle of the causal closure of...
Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behaviour generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can therefore...
The analyticity properties of the S matrix in the physical region are determined by the correspondence principle, which asserts that the predictions of classical physics are generated by taking the classical limit of the predictions of quantum theory. The analyticity properties deducible in this way from classical properties include the locations o...
Shimony's method of analysis does not distinguish adequately between a legitimate assumption of no faster-than-light action in one direction and the to-be-proved assertion of faster-than-light transfer of information in the other direction. The virtue is noted of replacing the logical framework based on counterfactual concepts by one based on the c...
The cognitive frame in which most neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behavior is conducted contains the assumption that brain mechanisms per se fully suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal...
There are deep similarities between Whitehead's idea of the process by which nature unfolds and the ideas of quantum theory. Whitehead says that the world is made of ''actual occasions'', each of which arises from potentialities created by prior actual occasions. These actual occasions are happenings modeled on experiential events, each of which co...
It is shown that no theory that satisfies certain premises can exclude faster-than-light influences. The premises include neither the existence of hidden variables, nor counterfactual definiteness, nor any premise that effectively entails the general existence of outcomes of unperformed local measurements. All the premises are compatible with Copen...
It is emphasized that a many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory exists only to the extent that the associated basis problem is solved. The core basis problem is that the robust enduring states specified by environmental decoherence effects are essentially Gaussian wave packets that form continua of non-orthogonal states. Hence they are not a d...
I shall consider each of the 18 claims made by Mohrhoff, and explain, in each case, why I take the path opposite to the one by which he seeks to remove the effects of our thoughts on the activities of our quantum mechanically described brains.
Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules that describe connections between our observations. Many physicist have believed that this renunciation of the attempt describe nature herself was premature, and John von Neumann, in a major work, reformulated q...
Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules describing connections between our observations. Many physicist have regarded this renunciation of our effort describe nature herself as premature, and John von Neumann reformulated quantum theory as a theory of...
The question raised by Shimony and Stein is examined and used to explain in more detail a key point of my proof that any theory that conforms to certain general ideas of orthodox relativistic quantum field theory must permit transfers of information over spacelike intervals. It is also explained why this result is not a problem for relativistic qua...
Experiments motivated by Bell's theorem have led some physicists to conclude that quantum theory is nonlocal. However, the theoretical basis for such claims is usually taken to be Bell's Theorem, which shows only that if certain predictions of quantum theory are correct, and a strong hidden-variable assumption is valid, then a certain locality cond...
It is shown how environmental decoherence plays an essential and constructive role in a quantum mechanical theory of brain process that has significant explanatory power.
Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules that describe connections between our observations. However, an examination of certain nonlocal features of quantum theory suggests that the perceived need for this renunciation was due to the uncritical importa...
Recent nonlocality results support a new picture of reality built on the ideas of John von Neumanm
Recent theoretical and experimental papers support the prevailing opinion that large warm systems will rapidly lose quantum coherence, and that classical properties will emerge. This rapid loss of coherence would naturally be expected to block any critical role for quantum theory in explaining the interaction between our conscious experiences and t...
A recent proof [H. P. Stapp, Am. J. Phys. 65, 300 (1997)], formulated in the symbolic language of modal logic, claims to show that contemporary quantum theory, viewed as a set of rules that allow us to calculate statistical predictions among certain kinds of observations, cannot be imbedded in any rational framework that conforms to the principles...
How is mind related to matter? This ancient question inphilosophy is rapidly becoming a core problem in science, perhaps themost important of all because it probes the essential nature of manhimself. The origin of the problem is a conflict between the mechanicalconception of human beings that arises from the precepts of classicalphysical theory and...
Aspects of a quantum mechanical theory of a world containing efficacious mental aspects that are closely tied to brains, but that are not identical to brains. Comment: 69 pages. Invited contribution to Xth Max Born Symposium: "Quantum Future". Published in "Quantum Future", eds. P. Blanchard and A. Jadczyk, Springer-Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-540-65218-3...
David Mermin suggests that my recent proof pertaining to quantum nonlocality is undermined by an essential ambiguity pertaining to the meaning of counterfactual statements in quantum physics. The ambiguity he cites arises from his imposition of a certain criterion for the meaningfulness of such counterfactual statements. That criterion conflates th...
Citations
... The theory equips us with new conceptual tools to probe the interpretations of quantum mechanics, the role of measurement, and the nature of reality (Bohr, 1935;Bell, 1964;Zeilinger 1999). For instance, the subjective observer-dependent nature of the quantum state implied by the Bayesian B(ρ) operator seems to support a participatory interpretation where consciousness plays a key role (von Neumann, 1955;Stapp, 2007). ...
... Heisenberg's proposal that something like Aristotle's notion of "potentia" should be incorporated into the ontology underlying quantum mechanics has gotten little traction among physicists, perhaps because this potentia is by definition not instantiated and hence unobservable. However, recently Stapp (2017) and Kastner et al. (2018) have followed Heisenberg's proposal that this real potentia characterizes the superposition of the quantum states as described by the orthodox (Copenhagen) quantum interpretation, which is the case with Mumford and Anjum (2018) as well. According to this view, the quantum system remains in superposition of possible states until a measurement occurs and the wave function "collapses" into the experimental outcomes. ...
... Here, the trace operation is denoted by the According to orthodox QM, whether an emotionally significant experience occurs can be considered a "Yes" or "No" question posed to nature (Stapp, 2017a). Let us attribute a value of (+1) to a "Yes" answer and a value of (-1) to a "No" answer. ...
... Their protocol consisted of interlaid alpha and beta training roundsduring the session, their probands were rewarded for switching their brain wave activity to fit the different requirements of each round. Our protocol is being designed having in mind the cohort of adults without severe specific neurological or psychical disorderswe expect that the probability to help a motivated adult to better his/her ability of self-regulation of momentary emotional state should be an appropriate job for the neurofeedback training (Schwartz, Stapp and Beauregard, 2004). The feedback is provided in purely sonic form, as the sense of hearing is supposedly the most convenient one for orientation in multiparameter signal (Hinterberger, 2011). ...
![[object Object]](https://i1.rgstatic.net/ii/profile.image/272815307882501-1442055646425_Q64/Jeffrey-Schwartz-4.jpg)
... Georgiev (2015aGeorgiev ( , 2015b makes the stronger claim that Stapp's hypothesized mechanism for free will, the quantum Zeno effect, is nullified by environmental decoherence. Stapp (2015) responds by proving that the quantum Zeno effect survives environmental decoherence. He argues on this basis that the quantum Zeno effect could plausibly operate efficaciously in animal brains. ...
... 86). One could also argue that 'experienced self' is a part of the 'stream of consciousness', which provides the background for the central focus of attention (Stapp, 2005). Consciousness during dream may have degraded attention (Sarter & Bruno, 1999). ...
... Life related phenomena have anti-entropic behaviors opposite to those typical of classical thermodynamics, showing increases in the degree of order coexisting with the absorption of energy from the environment (Scala, 2022b). Also, consciousness interferes with quantum waves, shows nonlocality properties, whereas quantum states take place in the expectation that the observer associates with these states as a basis for future action (Neumann; Stapp, 2012). ...
... As Heisenberg had drawn considerable attention to consciousness and free will, placing them in his ontological basic world of potentialities, his view underpinned by the uncertainty principle was rather -ontic and thus beneficial to free volition. Such a position had just been initiated by Whitehead [32] in his metaphysics of "becoming," which was later maintained by Penrose [18] and Stapp [33] in their quantum brain models that are based on a -ontic interpretation, emphasizing a fundamentally random aspect of the physical world. ...
Reference: Why the Quantum Brain?
... This is related to the cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead [82], in which mental and physical poles of so-called " actual occasions " are considered as both psychological and physical aspects of reality. In a more recent communication, Stapp [83] [84] specified that ontological features with respect to process of Whitehead are intrinsically correlated with the process of quantum state reduction. He related the fundamentally processual nature of actual occasions to both the state reduction and the correlated psychological intentional act. ...
![[object Object]](https://i1.rgstatic.net/ii/profile.image/278783685873673-1443478618379_Q64/Harald-Atmanspacher-2.jpg)
... From 1971 to 1997, he used an inequality without hidden variables [39,53,54]. Then from 1997 to 2004 [55][56][57], Stapp turned to modal logic. Finally, in 2004, he recognized the problems with his modal logic approach and devised a reasoning based on Hardy's 1993 paper [58]. ...
Reference: On the Meaning of Local Realism
